Archive for the ‘Female Genetics’ Category

The touch of a feather, the itch of a mosquito bite, the prick of a needle: The body is capable of distinguishing and responding to all of these sensations in a near instantaneous relay, from skin to brain and back again.

Our brain is constantly computing these things, and in healthy people it never gets it wrong, says Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, a biologist in Penns School of Arts and Sciences.

The details that drive these processes are now at the heart of Abdus-Saboors research. Using a variety of techniques and models, he and his labestablished at Penn last yearseek to tease out the nervous system pathways involved in translating sensations to the brain, with a particular focus on acute and chronic pain.

His work has taken on a new significance in light of the opioid epidemic.

As a field we have really struggled in identifying novel pain killers, he says. This is why we have an overreliance on opioids.

Getting to the bottom of basic mechanisms in pain sensation has the potential to uncover new pathways that could be targeted with alternative medications. And with a new technique for applying a measurement to pain itself, Abdus-Saboor has in hand a platform that could be used to screen new drugs or even help clinicians one day evaluate their patients discomfort in a much more rigorous way than is currently available.

Animal behavior and biology got their hooks into Abdus-Saboor when he was a child. Growing up in Philadelphias Germantown neighborhood, he fashioned a laboratory in his home at age 14, winning a citywide science competition for his investigations of crayfish.

He carried that fascination with him through his undergrad years at North Carolina A&T State University, pursuing animal science as a pre-vet student. A summer in a laboratory at Penn refined that interest. The mysteries contained in the molecules and genes of animals began to emerge as the most captivating to Abdus-Saboor.

He wound up pursuing his graduate studies with Meera Sundaram at Penn in the Perelman School of Medicine, focusing on the genetics of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. But he made a conscious choice to shift gears as he embarked on two postdoctoral fellowships.

Thinking about running my own lab one day, I was considering which area has the biggest growth potential in biomedical research, he recalls. The brain is the last frontier; its the least well-understood organ. I thought that, if I could apply some of the tools that Id been learning in genetics and molecular biology toward the study of the nervous system, then perhaps I could make some important discoveries and look at things from a different vantage point.

First in a postdoctoral fellowship with Benjamin Shykind of Cornell University and in a second position working with Wenqin Luo back at Penn, Abdus-Saboor played catch up in the field of neuroscience.

Basically, every single approach that I worked on was new to me, he says. But I think that navet helped me.

Specifically, Abdus-Saboor started asking questions about the common techniques use to evaluate responses to sensory stimuli in mouse studies and wasnt satisfied with the answers. Certain assays, for example, relied on a binary responseeither the animals responded to a stimulus or they didnta measure that struck Abdus-Saboor as rather crude and possibly biased.

Over the last few years, as he wrapped up his postdoc with Luo and established his own lab at Penn, he set out to create a more refined scale for evaluating these types of responses. His technique relies on the use of a high-speed videography, capable of capturing 1,000 frames per second. In a paper published in August in Cell Reports, he, colleagueNathan Fried, Luo, and others reported the creation of a nuanced mouse pain scale that could effectively differentiate responses to a variety of sensory stimuli.

Taking lessons from other model systems, mainly fruit flies and zebrafish, people have been using high-speed cameras to slow down behaviors that we cant see with the naked eye, says Abdus-Saboor. I had the hypothesis that if we did this, maybe there was a lot more information we could extract that could inform us and teach us about what the animal is experiencing. And that turned out to be the case.

Processing frames from these recordings manually, which is how the researchers initially completed the study, was a tedious task. But working with biostatisticians, computational biologists, and machine-learning specialists, Abdus-Saboor and members of his lab were able to streamline the process, and, in collaboration with departmental colleague Joshua Plotkin, are working to automate the video frame-by-frame analysis.

We want others to easily adopt this technology, and automation would help avoid the potential error and variability of human scoring, he says. There are emerging technologies that are allowing us to do this.

So far, theyve tested the platform using both male and female mice representing a variety genetic types and have gotten consistent results across the board.

As his lab has developed this technology, theyve been working in parallel to more deeply understand the nervous system circuits that produce the sensation of pain, especially in the context of chronic pain. People who suffer from chronic pain become more sensitive to various types of touch, even an otherwise innocuous application of warmth or pressure.

This is the chronic pain we hear a lot about now, in this opioid epidemic era, Abdus-Saboor says.

In his relatively short time as a faculty member, hes already struck up collaborations with researchers working on pain elsewhere in the University to advance the science of treating pain. In the School of Dental Medicine, he and Claire Mitchell have worked together on a study of dental pain. Abdus-Saboor has also had productive conversations with researchers, such as Penn Dental Medicines Elliot Hersh, who are interested in applying his high-speed camera platform in clinical settings to objectively evaluate the patients pain and prescribe painkilling drugs appropriately.

Were not there yet, but these are conversations were starting to have, says Abdus-Saboor. If this technology could evolve into the clinic? That would be a wonderful thing.

Ishmail Abdus-Saboor is the Mitchell and Margo Blutt Presidential Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvanias School of Arts and Sciences.

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The science of sensations - Penn: Office of University Communications

FOR many producers, the development of breed indexes was a significant step forward in the provision of genetic information.

As the number of EBVs increased with developments in performance recording, combined with new ways to capture genetic information, the complexity of making a purchase decision on a bull also became more challenging.

Breed Indexes offered an effective approach to considering the impact of genetic potential a bull possessed to influence the profitability of his progeny across the industry production chain. For many, this allowed a more focussed decision on bulls without having to individually assess each trait and attempt to consider how that would impact finishing traits of steers, or fertility traits in replacement heifers.

Although the Index was a strong guide, it allowed the opportunity for producers to create a short-list of potential bulls that could then be individually selected if required, based on personal preferences on specific genetic traits.

The development of Breed Indexes comes through world leading technology developed in Australia by AGBU the Australian Genetics Breeding Unit based in Armidale. BreedObject continues to refine and account for new genetic technologies and data, and with the release of Version 6, this has opened the possibility for breeds to reconsider the driving focus behind their breed indexes.

The first of the breed societies to reassess their indexes has been Herefords Australia.

Andrew Donoghue

Andrew Donoghue, the general manager of the Society, explained that the opportunity to provide Indexes that focussed on the production systems that Herefords were used within was an exciting outcome of the new BreedObject software.

We have been looking and talking with our members and across industry about where we as a breed want to head. Logically we know that the expectations for Herefords in Northern systems are very different to those in southern regions, Mr Donoghue said.

In the past the focus of the indexes was on finishing systems. However when we talk about finishing systems, the outcome is more about compliance with a specification effectively, hitting requirements for fatness, carcase weight and marbling.

So while some people choose to use grass finishing as their focus and others grain finishing, we are still effectively heading in the same direction.

As Mr Donoghue explained, the significant difference between production systems in the north and the south revolves largely around the cost of feed during annual feed gaps.

The cost of feed in those periods is significant depending where the cattle are located, he said, and this has a major impact on a production systems profitability.

Choosing bulls that can have a genetic influence on a herds feed efficiency, as well as growth and mature weights will help producers adjust their programs to better meet their environmental constraints in a profitable way, he said.

Click on image for a larger view

For producers, the change in Indexes will be to step away from looking at a finishing system, and ranking bulls according to their value.

Instead, the first step will be to consider their location as either a southern or northern producer. From there, the progression is to select a production system that reflects their operation, before then choosing the most suitable bulls for that program.

The Hereford Indexes to be released this month have all been developed with a focus on maintaining and improving eating quality outcomes. Within the model that creates the ranking, premiums to reflect marbling were included, as well as placing pressure on early growth in order to maintain low levels of ossification.

Once producers have chosen their location and production system, there are four indexes that can be considered. For those in southern production regions these will be:

Andrew Donoghue highlighted the major difference between the Northern and Southern Self-Replacing Index as being a significant difference in feed cost.

While the Index still targets the production of cattle for the domestic market, he said it was envisaged that producers would use this in either straightbred Hereford herds or where Hereford bulls are going into crossbred herds, say over a Bos indicus composite based cow herd.

Finishing weights are slightly higher in the northern systems and the indexes also pick this up in the calculations, he said.

The second Northern focused Index, the Northern Baldy Terminal Index is one that will appeal to producers who are choosing Hereford Bulls to join to Bos indicus infused females (eg Santa Gertrudis) where all progeny (male and female) are destined for slaughter. The finishing systems are calculated with steers and heifers slaughtered at 18-19 months of age; steers producing 340kg carcases with 14mm of P8 fat depth, and heifers producing 300kg carcases with 17mm of P8 fat.

In discussing the new Indexes, Mr Donoghue highlighted the attention focussed on creating a system that more realistically reflects production, and environmental pressures experienced by breeders across the country.

We have really spent a lot of time consulting with our members and across industry ensuring that the new indexes align with the key production and market systems for Hereford cattle, he said.

Alastair Rayner

Alastair Rayner is the Principal of RaynerAg, an agricultural advisory service based in NSW. He regularly attends bull sales to support client purchases and undertakes pre sale selections and classifications. He can be contacted here or through his website http://www.raynerag.com.au

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Weekly genetics review: Production systems the focus in new breed indexes - Beef Central

HEREDITY, AS well as medical conditions and some medications and supplements, are all common causes of hair loss in men. When determining the key cause of baldness, it is important to understand ones personal genetics and account for any other risk factors and practices that may damage the hair.

We lose approximately 100 hairs a day, a loss that does not cause noticeable bald spots. However, when this loss is aggravated, a baldness pattern will appear or the hair will start falling noticeably more than usual. Some of the common causes include the following:

While genetic baldness is not preventable, you can reduce or mitigate other risk factors by talking to your physician when you start a new medical treatment that lists hair loss among its side effects.

Some of the above mentioned causes may have easy fixes, such as implementing a healthy and balanced diet that will include lots of proteins, iron, and zinc. Removing the causes of stress and paying attention to how you style your hair is also important. You may want to stop using damaging hair products or keeping your hair in a too-tight bun, for those who prefer the man bun.

Identifying the cause of hair loss is the first step towards treating the problem. Once you have determined it, you can talk to a physician. He may recommend hair prescription tablets or a hair transplant as a suitable solution for the genetic causes of hair loss.

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Common causes of hair loss in men - The Voice Online

Everyone handles their mental health in different ways. Some people turn to the gym for stress release and waves ofendorphins. There are people who turn to meditation, mindfulness, spirituality and religion for peace of mind and body. Therapy is another way people find clarity and control over their demons. There are people who take medication to help treat their mental illness, and people who do one or more of the above. Whatever path you choose to find healing is your decision, and it is no one elses job to judge your path. We are all different people and therefore need different things. Healing is not a one-size-fits-all deal, and we should all be encouraged to find what helps us.

I began my healing in 2013 when I first graduated high school and was off to college. I always knew I had depression, but I never saw it for the monster it was. I had been in therapy since I was about 8 years old due to my parents divorce and I felt like I was doing fine. I went to college in the fall and started to experience extreme panic attacks and fell into a deep depression. I dropped out a month later and moved home to solve this hiccup in my path. A few appointments later, I found my way to a new doctor (since I was too old for my pediatrician) and was put on antidepressants for my depression. This continued until 2016 when I found a new physician, since mine was getting me nowhere, and decided to find an adult therapist. I was put on three different medications, went to intensive therapy on and off and found myself at college graduation three years later. Honestly? I was proud I made it that far because during that time I was drowning. I was taking medicine, working out every day, going to therapy but why wasnt I better?

Related: Review: Paul Rudds New Netflix Show 'Living With Yourself' Captures What Its Like to Be Split by Depression

I moved home and began the search for a full-time job. The transition to adulthood is hard and it is very real. My anxiety and depression were still there in full swing, but I was able to get through a few months without a total meltdown. After weeks of interviews, I was offered a job; and two weeks into it, I quit. I spiraled right back into the deep end and immediately ran to my general doctor for a medication change. A year went by, I thought I solved it and was offered a similar position to the one before. Two days after accepting the job offer, I spiraled into a manic episode and crashed. I started my new job and shortly after, almost landed myself in the hospital from violent panic attacks. I quit. I had to start all over, where was I even supposed to begin?

This was me August of 2019. This was me two months ago. In those two months, I have found more answers than I ever have before. Do you want to know how?

Related: How I'm Learning Not to Fear Recovery From Depression

I found a professional in the field.

Not a general doctor.

Not a family therapist.

But rather a psychiatrist who specializes in treating mental illness day in and day out. A therapist who met me where I was and continues to challenge me in ways I can understand.

I share this story because mental illness is no joke. It is not fake, it is not something that people make up. It is real and it is raw. My brain is sick and I had spent the last six years searching for answers from people who were not qualified to give me any. It is vital to find someone who specializes in what you are searching for. Do you want to know how I know?

My psychiatrist spent my first appointment talking to me about my life, then ran a DNA test to see what medications would work with my genetics. It turns out, the five different medications I tried and was rotated on did not work for my genetics. Not one. Chemically, they were not a match. I spent six years spending money and searching for answers in people who did not have the background to help me.

Related: 4 Tips That Help Me Complete Simple Tasks When I'm Depressed

If you want to change your medication, or start taking it, find someone who specializes in it. If you want to start working out and dont know where to start, find a trainer at a nearby gym. If you want to learn meditation, find a class or research it. If you want to delve deeper into spirituality, find a spiritual guide to help you.

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What Happened When I Found the Right Doctor for My Depression - Yahoo Lifestyle

An Ottawa astrophotographer who has been fascinated with space for years has earned recognition from NASA scientists for a dramatic image of the aftermath of two galaxies colliding.

In the photo, what looks like a pale but fiery strip of orange curls around a blue and purple swirl of stars. The two forms meet in a bright flare in the middle, creating the impression, as NASAs Astronomy Picture of the Day description puts it, that this galaxy is jumping through a giant ring of stars.

Rudy Kohl, the Ottawa man behind the processing of the image, said that theres a gravitational force that has been set up between them, sort of pulling it apart, though he was quick to add that he was not an astronomer himself.

In a phone interview with CTVNews.ca, Kohl said he was thrilled to have his photo chosen by NASAs Astronomy Picture of the Day -- his second image since he started submitting to NASA.

It's really extraordinary to get one of those, he said. Hundreds of images get submitted every day to NASA for this.

Astronomy Picture of the Day has been running since 1995, and each photo comes with an explanation of the image, provided by a professional astronomer.

Although it appears as though two galaxies are wrestling in front of our eyes, both the blue and orange arms in the picture are all part of the same galaxy: NGC 7714.

According to the description, the image shows how NGC 7714 has been stretched and distorted by a recent collision, with NGC 7715, a smaller, neighboring galaxy, that is off to the left out of the frame of the image.

Scientists believe that NGC 7715 charged right through NGC 7714.

The ring of golden light in the image is made up of millions of older stars thought to be similar to our sun, the description says, while the bright centre of NGC 7714 is the nexus of a new star formation for the galaxy.

Youd never guess it, looking at the vibrant colours in the picture, but this image started out life as a series of black and white photos taken by NASAs Hubble telescope.

It took hours of work to process the image, but it was work that Kohl, 69, was happy to do.

Kohl is part of an online community of astrophotographers who create stunning colour photographs of space. Although some have their own telescopes and equipment to take photos of the sky themselves, others rely on free archives, such as the Hubble Legacy Archive, to find the source images to create their masterpieces.

If the source images are black and white, does that mean those who process the images are choosing colours at random?

Not according to Kohl. The colour clues are in the filters used by Hubble, he said.

What they do is they put a colored filter in front of that black and white camera. In this case there are three colors, red, green, and blue. It's called RGB imaging. It's the same imaging as in our computer monitors and in our televisions, he explained.

Every single pixel is made up of a percentage of red, percentage of green and percentage of blue.

So the Hubble camera first puts a red filter in front of it, which means it blocks out everything but the red, and so the red wavelength hits the camera and you get an image.

Although the image still comes out looking black and white, it is effectively a picture of what the galaxy would look like if it was composed of only red light.

The process is repeated with blue filters and green filters, Kohl said, producing numerous images that -- while technically greyscale images -- contain a massive amount of information regarding where different wavelengths of light, and thus different colours, are concentrated in the image.

Astrophotographers take these different greyscale images and fill them with colour corresponding to the filter they were taken with, so they end up with numerous red, blue, and green layers of the same deep space object. When they line the different images up on top of each other, thats when the real picture of a galaxy, star or nebula starts to form.

It takes a lot of processing and refining of the different layers to filter out the noise in the images and produce a final photo that looks as crystal clear as Kohls picture of NGC 7714. Kohl said it can take anywhere from 12 to 16 hours to finish an image.

He used to have his own telescopes and equipment to image the heavens with, but when chronic illness advanced on him, he said he had to sell his gear.

Broke my heart to do it, he said.

Working with public archives of space images allowed him to hold onto his passion.

A love of science is something that has informed almost his entire life. Kohl got his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics at Carleton University, and met his wife while he was at it, who was also studying science. He only started posting astrophotography pictures within the last few years, but he's not slowing down now.

I'm going to be doing it for the rest of my life now, he said. I am so blown away, like when I think of the vastness of space.

NGC 7714 is around 100 million light years away from Earth, which makes it a relatively close cosmic neighbor.

According to APOD, NGC 7714 and NGC 7715 first started interacting around 150 million years ago, and are expected to continue for several hundred million years more, possibly resulting in the two combining into a single galaxy.

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This image shows the aftermath of two galaxies colliding - CTV News

By JACKIE LEBOMore by this Author

I write this from Iten, home of, among many others, Sharon Cherop, winner of the 2012 Boston Marathon.

If one spent any significant amount of time here, it would be hard to believe that Kenyan athletic success may be innate as stated by Max Fisher in his 2012 article in the Atlantic Online titled, Why Kenyans make such great runners: A story of genes and culture.

The article exhibits a complete failure of imagination, research and knowledge. I have spent the last six years interviewing hundreds of runners, coaches, officials in Iten, Eldoret, Kaptagat, Kapsabet, Kisii and Nyahururu.

Athletes follow the New York Marathon at the Keellu Resort in Iten on November 5, 2017. PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA |NATION MEDIA GROUP

I have lived with athletes, watched their training and travelled with them to races in the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy the US and Japan, as well as watched many local races here in Kenya. I will give a short history of the sport in Kenya and the context in which the running dominance occurs.

Fisher cannot imagine that, as in many centres of excellence, there exists a system of knowledge, institutional infrastructure, and people that has created and sustained Kenyans running dominance.

Fisher did not interview any Kenyan athletes, coaches or administrators, though a good number of them were present at the Boston Marathon, where a sweep of both the mens and womens races by Kenyan athletes was the starting point for his article.

Instead, the writer used dated and controversial studies to draw the flawed conclusion that Kenyan runners are dominant because of their genes.

Kenyas first major international competition was the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, where Nyandika Maiyoro was fourth in the three-mile event, Lazaro Chepkowny was seventh in the six-mile race, and the Kenyan team was fourth in the 4-by-400m relay. At the Olympics in Melbourne two years later, Maiyoro was seventh in the 5,000m race.

By the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where Abebe Bikila won East Africas first Olympic gold medal in the marathon event, Maiyoro was sixth in the 5,000m race and Seraphino Antao and Bartonjo Rotich reached the semi-finals of the 100m and 400m hurdles, respectively. At the 1962 Commonwealth Games, Antao won Kenyas first Club gold medals in the 100 and 220 yard sprints.

The Perth Games also saw the first appearance of Kipchoge Keino, who would go on to become Kenyas most famous runner of that era. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics saw Kenyas first Olympic medal, a bronze earned by Wilson Kiprugut in the 800m.

It was at the 1968 Mexico Olympic games that Kenyan athletes came into their own, winning 11 medals, including three gold by Amos Biwott in the steeplechase, Naftali Temu in the 10,000m, Amos Biwott in the steeplechase and Kipchoge Keino in the 1,500m.

From 1954 to 1968 there was a steady progression where Kenyan athletes, coaches and officials were interacting with the best in the world, learning from them, adapting their methods to fit the Kenyan training regime, and creating strategies to beat them.

The late Seraphino Antao told me in an interview he improved his training methods after meeting world leading sprinters like American world record holder and Olympic gold medallist Bob Hayes and Peter Radford, the British world record holder. This led to Antaos Commonwealth Gold medals.

On learning that altitude may be a factor at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, coach Charles Mukora moved part of the teams training to Nyahururu, situated at high altitude.

National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOCK) president Charles Mukora (right), receives a report about Kenyas participation in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona from Isaiah Kiplagat in 1992. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

Mukora and his coaching team also devised the strategy of Ben Jipcho going out really fast in the 1,500m so as to confuse the rest of the field, especially the American Jim Ryun, the then world record holder and pre-race favourite. It worked as Kipchoge Keino stormed to victory.

Other breakout athletes of the 68 Games in the disciplined forces include Jipcho (Kenya Prisons) and Naftali Temu (Kenya Army). The disciplined forces continue that tradition today, hiring young athletes after high school, and, predictably, winning national athletics competitions every year.

Iten is home to more than 1,000 runners from various parts of Kenya. An additional 1,000 runners live and train within a 70-km radius in Eldoret, Kaptagat, Kapsabet and Cherangany. Further afield in Kisii, Ngong, Nyahururu and Ukambani, there are another 1,000 runners. Some estimates put the figure of runners training in Kenya at 5,000. All running, not for recreation, but targeting excelling at the very highest levels of the sport and doing little else but eating, resting and training.

At the edge of Iten stands St Patricks High School. Founded in 1961 by Patrician Brothers, the school held both academic and sporting excellence in equal measure. St Patricks teams have been national high school champions in basketball and volleyball numerous times. They have excelled in football and hockey at regional level and produced many world-class runners.

In 1976, a young Irishman named Brother Colm OConnell came to the school to teach Geography. He found a strong athletic programme run by Peter Forster, the brother of British Olympic 10,000m bronze medallist Brendan Forster. Peter Forster was aware of the programme that his brother used, so the training at the school was already at a high level.

Bro. Colm OConnell, an athletics coach who has lived in Iten, Elgeyo-Marakwet County for 42 years, during the launch of OConnell Street in Iten, Elgeyo-Marakwet County on August 18, 2018. The street was named in his honour for the contributions in the county and country at large. PHOTO |JARED NYATAYA |NATION MEDIA GROUP

A year later, Peter Forster finished his volunteer term at St Patricks and Brother Colm became the new coach. He learned from the athletes, read all the material he could get his hands on, and attended coaching seminars in Nairobi.

The school had already produced Olympians such as Mike Boit, the 800m bronze medallist at the Munich Olympics who, by 1976, was in the American collegiate system. But it was the identical Cheruiyot twins running in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics while still high school students that captured the public imagination. At the 1988 Seoul games, Peter Rono became the first Brother Colm-trained athlete to win an Olympic Gold.

In those days running was a way to get a job after high school in state-owned-companies such as Kenya Posts and Telecommunications, Kenya Railways and the disciplined forces the military, police and prisons. All these organisations provided infrastructure in the form of coaches, training facilities and salaries so the athletes could focus fully on training.

The coaches came to high school championships to scout and recruit the best runners for their teams. And if a runners grades were good enough, it was a way to get into American universities with a full scholarship. Competition to get into St Patricks became intense and there were many promising athletes who could not secure a place at the school.

Brother Colm set about establishing a system that would take the St Patricks method to other schools. In December 1989, he started a holiday youth camp for athletes and coaches from the region, and soon Singore, Kapkenda and Tambach high schools had strong athletic programmes. Kitang, Kapcherop and St Francis Kimuron high schools soon followed, as did primary schools like Mokwo.

What the holiday youth camp in Iten did was to consolidate gains made by Kenyan athletics in the 50s, 60s and 70s and take that knowledge to a wider and younger pool of potential athletes. In the 30-or-so years that the camp has been in existence, nearly 2,000 athletes have passed through it.

They include David Rudisha (800m world record holder), Wilson Boit Kipketer (former 3,000m steeplechase world record holder), Sally Barsosio (1993 World 10,000m champion), Wilson Kipketer (former 800m world record holder and three-time 800m world champion), Mathew Birir (1992 Olympics 3,000m steeplechase champion, Rose Cheruiyot (1995 All Africa Games 5,000m champion), Stephen Cherono (former 3000m steeplechase world record holder), Janeth Jepkosgei (2007 800m World Championships), Edna Kiplagat (2011 Daegu World marathon champion), Brimin Kipruto (2008 Beijing Olympics 3,000m steeplechase champion), Vivian Cheruiyot (2011 World 5,000m and 10,000m champion), and 2012 Boston Marathon winner Sharon Cherop. This is by no means a comprehensive list.

Kenya's David Lekuta Rudisha poses next to the record board after winning the men's 800 final during the London 2012 Olympic Games on August 9, 2012 in London. PHOTO | FRANCK FIFE | AFP

The late 80s and early 90s was also a time of great change at the IAAF. Under the leadership of the entrepreneurial Primo Nebiolo, the Federations annual budget grew from $50,000 (Sh5 million) to $40 million (Sh4 billion).

Nebiolo believed runners should make a living from the sport, just like football and basketball players. He approached companies, signed big sponsorship packages and negotiated lucrative television deals.

Athletes at the top of their events could earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each season. Stars were made, there was a rejuvenated interest in the sport and races started to pop up in many cities and towns as they could attract sponsorship.

Among the Kenyan athletes to benefit from professionalisation of the sport was Douglas Wakiihuri, who won the marathon at the World Championships in Rome in 1987.

Kenya Pipeline company Corporate communications Manager Jason Nyantino (right) hands over a dummy cheque of Sh3 Million to Soya awards brand ambassador Douglas Wakiihuri (left) as Claryce Anyango of Kenya Pipeline Communications department looks on at Laico Regency Hotel on January 8, 2019. PHOTO | CHRIS OMOLLO |NATION MEDIA GROUP

In 1989 he became the first Kenyan to win the London Marathon and the second Kenyan to win the New York Marathon in 1990. Other outstanding athletes from this period were John Ngugi, five-time World Cross Country Champion and gold medallist at the 5,000m in the 1988 Seoul Olympics; as well as Paul Kipkoech, the Rome 1987 World Championships 10,000m gold medallist.

The economist and 2011 MacArthur Fellow Ronald Fryer says that if you want to understand people, you have to look at which direction the incentives are pointing them to. With the professionalisation of the sport, runners stopped looking at athletics as a way to get a job or a college scholarship and started looking at it as a way to earn a living.

The first prize at the 2012 Boston Marathon was $50,000 (Sh5 million), and this did not take into account appearance fees, in the $100,000 (Sh10 million) to $250,000 (Sh25 million) range for top athletes, and shoe company bonuses. Kenyan runners do not operate in a vacuum, they operate within a global sports economy worth billions of dollars and overseen by the likes of Nike, Puma, Adidas, Asics, Brooks, New Balance, Under Armour and Champion.

The 2011 running shoe industry in the US alone was worth $2.33 billion. In 2010, 13 million people in the US finished road races, up 73 per cent from the year 2000. They buy running shoes, tights, shirts, hats, gels, power bars and energy drinks.

When an Adidas-sponsored Kenyan athlete wins the New York Marathon and breaks the course record, the company gets huge publicity, which in turn helps with product sales. Moments like this course records and world records are written into the athletes shoe contract, earning them lucrative bonuses and providing a strong incentive to run faster and faster.

When the first professional runners came back from the European circuit and paid cash for land, houses and cars, the young people around them took notice. The holiday youth camp at St Patricks provided the model for the professional training camps that sprang up in Iten, and many young people flocked to the camps with the dream of becoming star athletes.

In a country where higher education opportunities are limited, running presents a very real path to a better life, and that is why so many youngsters plunge into it.

The confluence of these events a long athletic tradition that went back to the 1950s, a stable country with institutions from schools to the disciplined forces and professional camps where training could evolve to the highest levels, connections through international athletic managers to races all over the world where there are large sums of money to be won in the face of limited opportunities, and many young people attempting the sport, making competition cut-throat has kept pushing the boundaries of distance running.

Nowhere else in the world do you get this combination of factors, except, perhaps to a lesser extent, in Ethiopia, Kenyas perennial distance-running rival.

Within these institutional frameworks you find a system that can now exploit elements like altitude by living in the higher elevation of Iten and training at the lower elevation of Chepkoilel. There are other places in the world where high altitude occurs, like Nepal and Columbia, but they dont have the institutions and resources dedicated to athletics that Kenya has.

This system exploits the fact that Kenya is an agricultural country that has relatively cheap food to meet the nutritional needs of its athletes. This system exploits the fact that, compared to other sports, distance running is relatively cheap to fund and the barriers to entry are low all you need are two pairs of running shoes and a track suit, easily obtained at any second-hand clothes seller.

This system exploits the fact that its rigorous training methods prepare athletes for the toughest competitions. This system exploits the fact that Eldoret has an international airport that is a 45-minute flight to Nairobi, and from there you can catch a flight to races all over the world.

This system exploits the fact that since many of the top distance runners in the world are here, the young runners in their training groups are always pitting themselves against the best. When these slim margins are stacked up, they constitute a considerable competitive advantage.

When the results of this system are presented, as in Fishers article, as how an ethnic minority that makes up 0.06 per cent of the world population came to dominate most of its long-distance races, it shows a complete lack of knowledge or understanding and reinforces a superstitious rather than factual approach to Kenyan running dominance.

It also perpetuates the myth that for a Kenyan to be a successful athlete all he or she has to do is lace up a pair of trainers. For every runner who makes it, there are ten who dont. Of the more than 2,000 runners who have gone through the holiday youth training camp in Iten, only slightly above 200 have made it to international level. Some 90 per cent dont make it. And the 90 per cent that dont make it were already at the top of their school or division. If this statistic made it into articles as often as the other one does, it would bring some much needed perspective into the discussion.

The observable in Kenyan running is far more awe-inspiring than the mythical. That is why runners from all parts of the world now come to train in Iten. After a stint in Iten in 2012, British athlete Paula Radcliffe, then the womens marathon world record holder, ran her best 10,000m in years.

Another British athlete, the 2012 breakout distance runner Mo Farah, credits part of his success to spending time with Kenyan athletes.

Britain's Mo Farah pays homage to Jamaica's Usain Bolt as he crosses the line to win 3000m Final event during the IAAF Diamond League Anniversary Games athletics meeting at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park stadium in Stratford, west London on July 24, 2015. PHOTO | GLYN KIRK |AFP

Genes cannot be passed on by observation and immersion in the Kenyan athletic system. But knowledge can. On the day of the Boston Marathon, young runners from primary and high schools in the Rift-Valley were reporting to St Patricks holiday youth camp. For some of these 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds, it was the beginning of a long and difficult journey to the peak of distance running.

On the first day of the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, Kenya won all six of the medals that were on offer, sweeping the womens marathon that morning and the womens 10,000m in the afternoon. Given that dominant display, those looking for easy answers would attribute it to genetics.

But the back story on the first day of Daegu was that womens athletics in Kenya was evolving just as womens roles in society were evolving. Both gold medallists Edna Kiplagat and Vivian Cheruiyot, as well as marathon bronze medallist Sharon Cherop, had been through the holiday youth camp in Iten, which gave equal opportunity to both male and female athletes each session had 20 male and 20 female athletes.

The womens ascendancy also had an economic component: mens running had become so competitive that it was hard to make a living while there was a lot more to give in the womens events, yet the prize money was equal.

Now, Ednas and Vivians husbands, both accomplished runners in their own right, had given up their own careers and were focused on training with and taking care of their wives as the couple could earn much more in that arrangement.

There have been no changes in the law, as Mr Fisher states in his article, apart from the new Constitution that was promulgated in August 2010, and the ascendancy of Kenyan women athletes started years before, fuelled by increased education and opportunities.

Though Mr Fisher states in his article that scientific research on the success of Kenyan runners has yet to discover a Cool Runnings gene, he goes on to base his articles genetic argument on two controversial studies that look at physiological traits. The studies, hardly neutral in the first place, do not even identify specific genes.

The first Kenyan to participate in the Winter Olympics was Philip Boit. Boit, a former distance runner, spent nearly two years preparing for the Olympics but came in last in the 10km cross-country skiing race at the 1998 Nagano Games. Bjrn Dhlie of Norway won that race.

Dhlie has also achieved one of the highest VO2 max scores ever recorded, which is the maximum rate of oxygen consumption of the body during exercise. The top ten list has two other Norwegian, one Swedish and one Finnish cross-country skiers. It is almost impossible to imagine a Kenyan journalist then writing an article that states the accomplishments of Northern European skiers was the result of high VO2 max and this was in turn the result of genes.

It is also difficult to imagine a group of Kenyan scientists taking Philip Boit, Kenyas skiing superstar, to Norway and then being amazed if he was beaten in a skiing competition by a group of Norwegian schoolboys.

Another area where athletes from Nordic countries have excelled is the javelin throw. When the Kenyan javelin thrower Julius Yego wanted to improve his performance, he turned to YouTube: since Kenya focuses so much of its resources to distance running, he did not have proper coaching.

The knowledge he gained from watching champion javelin throwers such as world record holder Jan Zelezny and Olympic Champion Andreas Thorkildsen on the internet led to a national record and a gold medal at the 2011 All Africa Games in Maputo.

Jackie Lebo, producer of the athletics documentary Gun to Tape, is a writer and film producer with The Content House.

Go here to read the rest:
Why many get the back story of Kenyas huge success wrong - Daily Nation

The Kraken, the mythical beast of the sea, is real.

Giant squid live in the dark depths of the ocean, and very little is known about them to this day.

Most of what the world has learned about the gargantuan creature, which can grow up to 40 feet long and live in a world devoid of sunlight, is taken from their floating carcasses, or from the belly of sperm whales.

Until 2005, no scientist had ever photographed a living giant squid. One hadn't been filmed until 2013. But scientists believe there are millions of them out there.

In June, a NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research expedition captured the first footage of a giant squid in American waters.

The New Yorker's David Grannwrote that giant squid can be "larger than a whale and stronger than an elephant, with a beak that can sever steel cables."

Here's what is known about the mysterious beast, and why so much is still not known.

Link:
Photos show the mysterious giant squid over 150 years of discovery - Business Insider

Dr. Sharyn Lewin & The Lewin Fund Honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month with

Womens Health & Wellness Symposium at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey

On Thursday, October 17th, Gynecologic Oncologist, Dr. Sharyn Lewin, on behalf ofThe Lewin Fund, hosted a Womens Health & Wellness Symposium at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey in Paramus.

The three-hour event included presentations by top health and wellness experts for an interactive discussion about the latest in research, awareness and prevention of womens cancers, including what patients need to know to take charge of their health.

Experts presentations included: Sharyn M. Lewin, MD as the host and moderator, Debbie Besson, MS, RD, CSO, Shari Brooks, Dr. Dorothy Chae, L.Ac., Ph.D. and Shari Siegel-Goldman, MD.

Guests also had the option to partake in on-site genetic testing and flu shots.

The Lewin Fund hosts monthly educational events to help educate and raise awareness for traditionally underfunded gynecologic cancers that impact one in three women and their families. The Lewin Funds next event will be a free genetics symposium focusing on Updates in Hereditary Cancers & Genetics, on Sunday, October 27thfrom 1:00 PM 3:30 PM at the Holy Name Medical Centers Marian Hall (718 Teaneck Road, Teaneck, NJ). Guests can register atholyname.org/GeneticsSymposiumor by calling 201-833-3392.

AboutThe Lewin Fund

The Lewin Fund to Fight Womens Cancers is non-profit based in New York City that supports cutting-edge and comprehensive care for women with cancer.

The Lewin Fund is committed to sponsoring innovative womens cancer research and collaborating with womens cancer support programs to prevent cancer and extend life for women with cancer. The Lewin Fund is inspired by the vision of one courageous woman who battled gynecologic cancer and sought to push the frontiers of clinical research initiatives.

We are focused on: enhancing preventive and screening techniques to reduce the incidence of malignancies; funding cutting-edge, innovative research; supporting personalized medical strategies to treat cancer and decrease morbidity and mortality; and improving the quality of life during treatment and recovery by partnering with individuals on the front lines of cancer care.

Our founder, Sharyn Lewin, M.D., FACS, is a board-certified gynecologic oncologist, specializing in the diagnosis, treatment and management of ovarian, endometrial, uterine, cervical, vulvar and vaginal cancers. Her practice employs a comprehensive, multidisciplinary team approach to screening, treatment and overall improvement in quality of care for women at high risk for ovarian cancer and other gynecologic malignancies.

Dr. Lewin serves as medical director of the Regional Cancer Centers Gynecologic Oncology Division at Holy Name Medical Center and spearheads the development of a Womens Comprehensive Health Center, a female-focused initiative providing care and support for women of all generations.

To donate to The Lewin Fund, go toTheLewinFund.org/donate.

About Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey

Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey is dedicated to preserving, fostering and securing a vibrant Jewish community locally, in Israel and around the world. We provide the guidance, vision and resources necessary to help those in need. They work collaboratively with donors, volunteers and other Jewish organizations to ensure that your contributions will be distributed to achieve the maximum impact.

In todays hyper-connected, uncertain world where rapid response is critical Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey has their fingers on the pulse of issues and are nimble enough to react to crises and respond to where the need is greatest. They are the eyes, ears and voice of your Jewish community.

http://www.jfnnj.org

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Dr. Sharyn Lewin & The Lewin Fund Honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month with Women's Health & Wellness Symposium at the Jewish Federation of...

Male and female mouse brains could have significant differences that reach right down to the cellular level, according to a new discovery.

Based on a reading of their genetic activity, neurons in a part of the mouse nervous system responsible for aggression and mating behaviours appear to be chemically structured in subtle but distinctly different ways between the two sexes.

These findings haven't been tested in other mammal species as yet, so we can't read too much into them. But it's a fascinating study that warrants further investigation in the brains of other animals.

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle looked at a region of the brain called the ventrolateral subdivision of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) in both male and female mice.

The VMHvl is tiny, made up of a mere 4,000 cells in mice, but still has quite a schedule on its hands, playing an important role in metabolism and complex sexual and social behaviours.

To identify cell types in the region, the researchers usedsingle cell RNA reading technology, which identifies genes that have been actively translated into RNA.

This is important, because while a species' full genome is kept in the nucleus of each cell, only a limited number of these genes will actually be expressed into proteins that meet the needs of the specific cell type. For example, a blood cell has different needs and therefore will activate different genes than a skin cell.

This technology provided the scientists with a snapshot of the 'books' being read in each cell's genetic library, giving them a clear idea of how each cell's individual physical make-up and activity differs.

Cells are considered to be of a certain type if clusters of genes in close proximity are expressed together to carry out a task.

In total the team identified 17 distinct types of brain cells in this tiny bit of brain tissue, which they then verified using glowing genetic tags in a process called fluoro in-situ hybridisation.

While that might sound like a lot of brain cell types, uncovering such a level of diversity shouldn't be all that surprising. Similar research has already identified scores of cell types across the entire hypothalamus.

What hadn't been seen before in mammals, at least were clear differences in neuron types between the male and female brains they analysed.

Some of these cell types were found in vastly greater numbers among mice of one gender or the other. One in particular was already known to make an enzyme that was present only in male mouse brains.

But another newly identified cell type was specific to female mice, not being found at all in male mice.

Importantly, these differences weren't a direct result of contrasting sex chromosomes, with the distinct brain cell types traced back to patterns of genes on parts of the genome both sexes possess.

Having genes that are generally active in one sex but not the other is hardly shocking. The small but significant leap in this case is finding clusters of activity large enough in brain cells to make them physically different types.

One thing that did come as a surprise was that only a few of these specific variations seemed to match specific behaviours, posing questions on just what it is many of these gender-biased cell types do.

"The results show that there are differences between male and female mammalian brains at the level of cellular composition as well as gene expression but that those differences are subtle, and their functional significance remains to be explained," says California Institute of Technology biologist, David Anderson.

It's a conclusion that's sure to polarise opinions on what is already a controversial topic. Research on the culture and biology of human gender is a divisive topic marked by a history of stereotypes and misinformation

On top of that, it's difficult to know how studies on lab animals might apply to humans. We're unlikely to be unique, but it's an assumption that would require further research to support.

Treading cautiously, studies like this one can't be dismissed out of hand either.

Like mice, there's a good chance our own brains not only promote different behaviours depending on whether we have a Y chromosome, but have fundamentally different cell types that just might be responsible for sex-specific functions.

That doesn't mean men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Genetics is complicated, and while we can generalise based on patterns, it doesn't dismiss the significance of individual variations or cultural influences.

Technology that can provide a detailed library list of genes being actively read in individual cells is changing what we know about everything from mental health to evolution to our own developing bodies.

We're almost certain to be surprised by just how diverse human biology can be.

This research was published in Cell.

See original here:
Gender-Specific Brain Cells Have Just Been Discovered Inside The Brains of Mice - ScienceAlert

Have you ever wondered why you wash your rice or soak it overnight before cooking it? Perhaps you wash your rice grains to enhance taste, reduce starch levels, or maybe that's just the way your family has always prepped rice. Thanks to a tip from science communicator Samantha Yammine who came across Dr. Nausheen Sadiq's neat finding while live-tweeting a forum on Diversity and Excellence in Science it turns out there is another reason why, as washing rice actually helps reduce the concentration of heavy metals, like chromium, cadmium, arsenic, and lead.

Heavy metal contamination in crops can be caused by human activities, such as mining, fertilizers, pesticides, and sewage sludge. Compared to most cereal crops though, rice (Oryza sativa L.) actually accumulates more heavy materials, like cadmium or arsenic, where long-term heavy metal intake can cause health risks. For example, long-term arsenic exposure leads to skin disease, high blood pressure, and neurological effects. This is especially important to consider as rice is a staple food across the globe.

Heavy metal contamination in crops can be caused by human activities, such as mining, fertilizers, pesticides, and sewage sludge.

Photo by TUAN ANH TRAN on Unsplash

In a recent study, researchers investigated the effects of different cooking methods (normal, high-pressure and microwave cooking) on the concentration, bio-accessibility and health risks posed by three heavy metals (cadmium, arsenic and lead) in two strains of brown rice. After cooking 100 grams of brown rice grains, researchers evaluated bioaccessibility (i.e. how much of the heavy metal is released for absorption) by mixing rice samples with simulated gastric fluid, and then used spectrometery to measure heavy metal concentration. Lastly, the researchers calculated the health risk posed by the heavy metals by calculating values such as the average daily dose.

Overall, the researchers found that instead of the three different cooking methods, it was the washing process which significantly reduced concentrations of cadmium, arsenic and lead, suggesting that the reduction may be due to rice morphology. For example, lead is found largely in the outer compartments of rice kernels, so lead is more likely to be removed during rice washing.

In contrast, the three cooking methods did impact bioaccessibility i.e. how much of the heavy metal would be released for absorption by the body. Here, washing and soaking isn't enough as rice absorbs water poorly at 25C. This finding was also reflected in calculated values: the average daily doses of cadmium, arsenic and lead were lower in washed and cooked rice, compared to raw rice.

It's worth noting that the European Commission has enforced limits on heavy metal levels - for example, arsenic is currently limited to 200 parts per billion (ppb) for adults and 100 ppb for infants. Both the U.S. and Canada currently have no limits in place for arsenic in food though Canada is currently reviewing a proposal to add maximum levels for arsenic found in white and brown rice, while the U.S. FDA has previously released a (non-binding) risk assessment, suggesting the same 100 ppb levels as Europe.

So the takeaway here is that yes, your family and all those professional chefs have been right all along. Yes, washing rice involves sacrificing some of its nutritional value, but doing so means you can reduce the levels of heavy metals present in grains, and still enjoy dishes like rice cakes. And returning back to Yammine's reporting, Saudiq actually shared that by soaking and washing rice for ~5 mins, you can get rid of 50-100% of these elements. (Thanks Sam!)

More here:
Genomics has a diversity problem. Here's how scientists are tackling it - Massive Science

This week Gina Rodriguez stepped into a proverbial pile of poo (once again) by casually sharing a video of herself singing the n-word. And seriously yall. Im tired.

Tuesday afternoon the Jane The Virgin actress posted a questionable clip on Instagram of her rapping Lauryn Hills verse on Ready or Not. Much to everyones chagrin, it shows her looking directly into the camera, as she says, fronting n*ggas give me heebie-jeebies.

Mind you, this is the same person who was dragged all up and down Al Gores internet this time last year for a series of All Lives Matter-esque micro-aggressions that didnt sit well with Black Twitter, and swore shed learned her lesson.

READ MORE: Habitual Hater Gina Rodriguez is the Latina friend you DONT want speaking up for you

So it should come as no surprise to anyone (except for maybe Gina herself) that this post would not go over well and would only open up a whole new can of worms. Which is exactly what it did.

To make matters worse, initially, rather than show any real remorse, she made one of those condescending, Im sorry if I offended apologies that are dripping with so much ego they only make things worse.

I am sorry if I offended anyone by singing along to The Fugees, to a song I love that I grew up on, she said in the post Im sure her publicist has since begged her to take down.

When she realized that her critics had an emotional I.Q. and werent going to accept a backhanded dismissal, then and only then did she stop patronizing us and actually apologize.

But just like in the case of Kevin Hart, when you talk down to people first, and have to literally get spanked by the public before taking real accountability, its impossible to unring that bell and it also makes us wonder if you even really believe what you did was wrong.

Wednesday, Rodriguez updated her Instagram with a message in which she admits that she thoughtlessly sang along and that whatever consequences I face for my actions today, none will be more hurtful than the personal remorse I feel.

The word I sang carries with it a legacy of hurt and pain that I cannot even imagine, she further concedes. Then concluded that this is a much deserved lesson I have some serious learning and growing to do and I am so deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.

While I appreciate this rare moment of introspection, I cant help remembering back in January when Rodriguez appeared on the Sway in the Morning radio show. During that softball interview she took zero accountability for falling out of favor with the public and then tearfully explained that we all just misunderstood her.

She even went as far as to describe her father as dark-skinned, despite the fact that hes barely the complexion of undercooked toast.

Then, for the rest of the segment, she basically repeated over and over again how shes fundamentally a good person, how Black actresses reached out to her to agree that the backlash was silly, and how if she in any way triggered our frayed sensibilities, she was sorry. But still, we all got it wrong. Sorry though.

OPINION: Gina Rodriguez STILL doesnt get why were mad, cries over anti-Black accusations

So basically, what were seeing here is a pattern where:

1. Gina Rodriguez shows a racial blind spot, which is understandable because society is designed to ingrain those in us.

2. Black Twitter tells her to cut that s**t out.

3. She gives a backhanded apology that makes it sound like she thinks were all really just too dumb to understand shes above reproach simply because shes a good person who grew up around Black people. Oh and yeah shes Latina so that should count for something cause everyone knows theres no racism in Latin America, right?

4. When all else fails, cry. Extra points if you cry to a Black man who is taught to find you sympathetic. Triple points if you also manage to mention how your Black female friends forgave you, cause apparently they get to speak on behalf of the rest of us.

Got it. The Rodriguez Apology Tour itinerary is pretty clear at this point.

Whats sad is, it took something as egregious as the flippin N-WORD to get her to even stop long enough to consider that maybe just maybe shes actually be part of the problem.

So are we just gonna keep writing pieces pitting Black women against Latina women? my fellow Afro-Latina colleague asked me bluntly one day. Because who does that really serve?

She said this at the top of the year, in response to finding out that I was going to be penning an op-ed about Rodriguezs emotional appearance on Sway in the Morning.

And you know what? That inquiry hit me between the eyes because Ive written countless articles about the Oppression Olympics and how many of our spaces are both Black and Brown, therefore making it against our own best interests to constantly fight amongst each other while white supremacy is left off the hook.

I also have a deep personal aversion to having my sharp intellect used as a tool to bring down other women. Because trust and believe, as a writer there have been several times when potential employers have tried to finesse me into using my pen as a sword, as if I was some sort of literary goon or hitman commissioned to torpedo someones career.

Ive worked really hard to side-step all of these traps and so on that day 9 months ago, instead of going for the jugular in my piece I showed Rodriguez some grace. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I also prayed all those Black actress friends she keeps mentioning encouraged her to spend less time shedding white woman tears and more time learning about her glaring blindspots.

For those who are asking: Wait, are you implying that Gina Rodriguez is a white woman? let me make this clear for the umpteenth time. Race is as much about optics as it is about genetics and culture.

You can pull out your Ancestry.com results and be as ethnic and proud about being 9% Black as you want. But the fact remains that your VISUAL proximity to whiteness be you fair, racially ambiguous, or a white presenting Latina will afford you privileges that it would be intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge.

So much in the same way when a white woman weaponizes her tears it usually brings society (even judges in high profile murder trials) to their knees, thanks to centuries of race based conditioning, when Rodriguez was in that Sway interview sobbing about how much we hurt her feelings in January many of those same white women tears dynamics were at play when the host, the audience, and even I all found ourselves feeling a little guilty for how much pain wed caused her.

She was dead ass wrong and yet somehow were the ones who felt bad, simply because she cried. Sound familiar?

READ MORE: Gina Rodriguez tearfully breaks down on Sway in the Morning

As a result of that coddling (which I now regret), sis got so comfortable around us again, she felt empowered to post a video of her saying the n-word. In 2019. During the Trump administration. Despite having a Netflix password and therefore access to dozens of documentaries that essentially explain, So, yeah. Lets not ever do that Gina.

So what have I learned from all this as not just a journalist but also as a critically thinking Black woman in America?

Welp! The next time I lovingly put my foot on someones neck and ask them to be accountable, as long as Im being fair and factual, Im not gonna let yall gaslight me into pulling punches.

I love uplifting women, I love uplifting my community and I still take no pleasure in ever dragging anyone (especially when the facts alone can do that). But stroking peoples egos to the point where theyre allowed to constantly play victim serves no one.

Rodriguez is probably a really lovely person, in fact Im almost convinced she is. But she apparently has a lot of maturing to do before she can even ever confidently stand on that soap box she keeps reaching for. Until she stops playing victim and really owns how she has consistently contributed to this ongoing PR nightmare, this probably wont be her last time issuing an apology to us. Tears and all.

Follow writer Blue Telusma on Instagram at @bluecentric

Read the rest here:
I TRIED to forgive Gina Rodriguez but her white woman tears are wearing me out - TheGrio

For women all over the world,acneis a skin concern that's likely reared its head on several occasions throughout life. From breakouts in our teen years to surprising smatterings in adulthood, we can hardly remember a time when we weren't reaching for products to help nip zitsfast.

Treating acne can be frustrating and complicated, so we turned toone of thebest dermatologists in Los Angeles, Nancy Samolitis, MD, co-founder and medical director ofFacile, to help break down the root causes, andthe best treatmentapproach. First and foremost, she'll cover the leadingacne-causing culpritsto help us better understand what we're up against. Then, continue on to check out Samolitis's expertly curatedskincare routinefor banishing breakouts, once and for all.

Despite our best efforts to care for our skin, sometimes acne and its contributors are just written into our genetic code. "The biggest contributor to acne is genetics," Samolitis says. "Some people are just programmed to have larger pores, more oil production, inflammatory skin, etc." That's not great news, but genetic or not, there are always solutions to help manage skin concerns like acne.

Hormones help to regulate everything from reproduction to stress, and according to Samolitis, they can also have quite a bit to do with acne. "Hormonal stimulation of oil production is also an important factor. This is obviously a factor in teens, where their hormones are just starting to rise, but is also very common in adult womenoften for unknown reasons," she explains. "Certain hormonal medications such as the progesterone component of birth control pills, IUDs, and bioidentical hormone supplements can trigger acne."

It's no surprise that what we put into our bodies has an effect on our skin. After all, just about every fad diet out there claims to be a road to clearer skin. Samolitis believes that there are specific foods to watch out for while actively treating acne, "in particular, foods that spike insulin levels like sugary or processed foods, " she says. "The hormones in meat and dairy that are given to farm animals may also play a significant role in acne, but this is poorly understood."

"Finally, use (or lack thereof) of certain skincare products can trigger breakouts as well."With the ever-growing selection of products available now, we have to be more cautious than ever when trying new things, as to not upset the skin's delicate pH balance. "This day and age, there are not as many comedogenic (pore-clogging) products and makeup as there used to be, but products that contain thick creams or ointments may lead to clogged pores and worsening of acne," says Samolitis.

With so many different factors that could potentially be contributing to acne, it might feel like an impossible feat to figure out the best steps to take. And the truth is, there's no better place to start than by consulting a trusted physician to nail down a treatment plan."If you have acne that is severe, cystic, scarring, and is resistant to skincare and treatments, it's important to seek treatment by a board-certified dermatologist who can assess and work up the acne, ruling out underlying medical causes," Samolitis implores. "There are many prescription treatments that are safe when used under proper supervision and can treat severe acne before scarring occurs."

In the meantime, our trusty expert has mocked up a skincare routine that will help anyonewho would like to treat their acne.

La Roche-Posay Effaclar Deep Cleansing Foaming Cream ($23)

Samolitis recommends starting the day with a clean slate by using a cleanser with salicylic acid. "Exfoliating acids, in particular, oil-busting salicylic acid, help to remove excess oil that is leading to clogged pores in the first place," she says.

Versed Just Breathe Clarifying Serum ($20)

After the skin is freshly cleansed, it's the perfect time to go in witha highly active ingredientbased serum. This one by Versed uses willow bark extractand a powerful zinc blend to clear out excess pore-clogging sebum.

PCA Skin Clearskin ($45)

"Niacinamide is a more newly recognized anti-inflammatory ingredient that works particularly well for adult female acne and also has anti-aging benefits as a bonus," Samolitis explains. She carries this niacinamide and antioxidant-rich treatment in her own practice andrecommends it to clients struggling with a multitude of inflammatory skin conditions.

Versed Dew Point Moisturizing Gel-Cream ($15)

As mentioned above, Samolitis cautionsagainstoil-based, heavy creams for those dealing with acne. The pore-clogging that could ensue just isn't worth the risk. That's why this lightweight, gel-cream moisturizer is the perfect alternative for achieving deep hydration without running the risk of breakouts.

EltaMD UV Clear Facial Sunscreen Broad-Spectrum SPF 46 ($35)

And of course, any daytime regimen should include SPF. Samolitis calls this popular choice from EltaMD acne-friendly sunblock and points out that it also contains niacinamide as an added bonus.

Versed Wash It Out Gel Cleanser ($13)

In the evenings, Samolitis again recommends cleansing to keep the skin free and clear of acne-causing dirt and debris. Rose, mint, and apple amino acids make this one a super-gentle option that doesn't sacrifice efficacy.

Differin Adapalene Gel 0.1% Acne Treatment ($13)

"Vitamin A derivatives (like retinol and adapalene, the active ingredient in over-the-counter Differin gel) help to normalize skin cell turnover and keep skin cells from sticking in the pores. They can also stimulate healthy collagen growth, improving acne scars," Samolitis advises.

Versed Hydration Station Booster With HA ($20)

Samolitis emphasizes how important it is toreplenish moisture in the skin to fight any possible redness or dryness thatmight arise while using a retinoid treatment. This Versed booster deploys two different kinds ofhydrolyzed hyaluronic acid into the skin.

Neutrogena Hydro Boost Hyaluronic Acid Hydrating Face Moisturizer Gel-Cream ($17)

"I love a light hyaluronic acidbased moisturizing cream like Neutrogena Hydro Boost," Samolitis says.

Neutrogena Rapid Clear Benzoyl Peroxide Leave-on Acne Face Mask ($8)

"When all is dry and soaked in, use benzoyl peroxide as needed.Naturally antibacterial, benzoyl peroxide detoxifies the bacterial overgrowth that occurs in inflammatory acne," Samolitissays. She recommends this leave-on mask by Neutrogena.

Malin + Goetz Acne Treatment Nighttime ($22)

As a final step, Samolitis also swears by a sulfur spot treatment as needed for any especially aggressive bumps. She likes this one by Malin+ Goetz.

Up next, everything you need to know to shrink a pimple overnight (really).

This article originally appeared on Who What Wear

Read More from Who What Wear

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A Top Dermatologist Says This Is the Best Skincare Regimen to Treat Acne - Yahoo Lifestyle

18 October 2019

Tania Adib discusses premature menopause with Female First

The menopause is a natural part of ageing for women, which occurs when their oestrogen levels start to decline, causing their periods stop and their ovaries to lose their reproductive function. The average age for a woman to start the menopause in the UK is 51 however, due to a range of different factors, some women can experience it before they reach the age of 40 often referred to as premature menopause.

Here, Ms Tania Adib, Consultant Gynaecologist at The Lister Hospital, part of HCA Healthcare UK, explains 7 things that everyone should know about premature menopause.

Ms Tania Adib says: The symptoms of early menopause are often the same as those experienced by women undergoing menopause at a normal age. At first, symptoms may include irregular or missed periods, periods that are lighter or heavier than usual and hot flushes. These symptoms usually signal that that the ovaries are producing less oestrogen.

"Further to this, some women may also experience the following symptoms, which will coincide with the menstrual changes mentioned above:

Ms Tania Adib says: There are several known causes of early menopause, although for some women the cause cannot be 100% determined:

"In addition to the above factors, any medical treatments that damage the ovaries or stop oestrogen production can cause early menopause. (For example, chemotherapy for cancer)."

Ms Tania Adib says: Like all menopausal women, those experiencing premature menopause will experience lowered oestrogen levels. Low levels of oestrogen can lead to lots of changes in a womans overall health and may increase her risk for certain medical conditions, such as heart disease, osteoporosis, cognitive decline, colon cancer, gum disease, tooth loss, and cataract formation.

"Women experiencing premature menopause are encouraged to visit their GP if ever they experience any unusual symptoms that might be associated with the above, just so that they can receive a thorough examination and rule these out.

Ms Tania Adib says: Unfortunately there is not a cure for premature menopause however, treatment options are available to help women to manage some of the unpleasant symptoms or conditions that come with it.

"The most common treatment is hormone replacement therapy (HRT), as this can treat menopausal symptoms.

Ms Tania Adib says: With the help of IVF, and other modern assisted fertility treatments, it is still possible to conceive a baby after the menopause.

"For example, many young, healthy women are now choosing to freeze their eggs as precautionary measure. She can then undergo IVF or IUI when she is older, if she struggles to fall pregnant naturally or cant because she has reached menopause. If a woman knows that her mother or grandmother experienced premature menopause, they I would advise that she considers egg freezing as this can help to protect her fertility for the future.

"For women who are experiencing premature menopause, but havent frozen their eggs, there are other assisted fertility options for them to explore such as egg donation or embryo adoption.

View post:
World Menopause Day: Five things you need to know about premature menopause - FemaleFirst.co.uk

Ive always admired multi-sport post-secondary student-athletes who can organize and adhere to demanding timetables, who excel in a two-pronged pursuit of higher education and championship trophies. Admittedly, this comes from someone whod be hard-pressed to get a one-float parade up and running. Still, its not hard to marvel at the exploits of Sophie de Goede, a two-sport star at Queens University.

The Victoria, B.C., native is a member of two varsity womens teams: basketball and rugby. She plays the former very well, the latter exceedingly well, while maintaining a lofty 3.9 grade point average in the third year of a challenging commerce program. She is first and foremost, as is any successful student/jock(ette) who competes on more than one varsity playground, a master of time management. Ask her and she will tell you that it is an essential attribute on the road to success in both disciplines. Time management skills, as the saying goes, are old hat for her, and they were long before she ever pulled on a tricolour jersey.

Im used to it, de Goede says nonchalantly, momentarily interrupting a Sunday study session to take a phone call from a newspaper hack. The two-time Academic All-Canadian is pleasant, polite, cheerful, simply flat-out nice all of which belies her well-earned reputation as a rugged, tenacious, fearless force on the pitch, so fit as to be practically inexhaustible. Wonderfully skilled, she is arguably the best rugby player in university today. She speaks of long-ingrained habits and a structured regimen that she began practising, in earnest, in high school, with hectic schedules routinely peppered with class times and plenty of practice/game times. Her high school sports included you get winded just reading the list rowing, soccer, field hockey, swimming, volleyball, basketball, cross-country, track and field and, of course, rugby. That excludes the rep roundball and Rugby Canada age-group clubs she played on and sometimes captained. (She was already a nationally carded rugby sevens athlete while in high school.)

My parents made sure I played other sports, de Goede recalls, and because I played other sports, its made me a better, more well-rounded rugby player. But my parents never pushed me towards rugby.

They didnt have to.

She was sold on the game practically by the time she was out of pull-ups. De Goede remembers scampering on the sidelines as a toddler while her dad coached a Victoria rugby club team, and just as often being on another sideline near her mom, who guided the same clubs womens side. Such front-row raw exposure to the sport at an early age was one reason why rugby took hold, osmosis-like.

The other reason was genetics. Sophie is a chip of the old block make that two old blocks the latest link in a regal rugby lineage. Her father, Dutch-born Hans de Goede, was a hard-nosed, no-nonsense lock forward who captained Canada in the first World Cup (1987). Her mom, Stephanie White, a Calgary native, was the inaugural captain of a Canadian womens side. Their distinguished playing and coaching careers were cited during eachs respective induction into the Rugby Canada Hall of Fame. Its an enviable ancestry, the equine equivalent of having Northern Dancer and Seabiscuit as your ma and pa. Youre born to run, baby, or in the case of the contact-craving de Goede, run around, over or through.

Team Canada senior womens coach Sondro Fiorino calls de Goede an exceptional, extremely gifted player. He coached her this summer when she joined the senior womens 15s for a Super Series tournament in San Diego.

Youve heard of the five-tool player in baseball? Fiorino asks before finishing his point. In rugby, its a four-tool player and Sophie possesses all four tools: speed, skills, size and smarts. Shes strong, agile, athletic, fast and intelligent. And she kicks for points. Not many forwards do that.

For good measure, he adds: Shes the fittest player in Canada, hands down. Her fitness scores are through the roof.

That glowing assessment doesnt surprise Mikela Lehan, an ex-Gaels rugby teammate who now manages the Gaels team. Lehan recounts a story from de Goedes very first day at training camp. Wed heard about this good first-year player coming from B.C., but you know, you never know what that persons going to be like, Lehan says. Sophie shows up just as were about to run our 1,600 metres, then she goes out and laps just about everyone.

As for de Goede the person, Lehan lauds. She is the most well-rounded person I know. She excels in every part of her life: friends, family, school, sports, socially. Sophies in her own category.

Ditto in university womens rugby. De Goede came to Queens asRugby Canadas reigning female player of the year after having spent the previous campaign training with the national sevens side. In her Golden Gaels debut, she tallied two tries and three converts, later copping OUA rookie-of-the-year laurels.

Her sophomore season brought OUA and U Sports player-of-the-year kudos, and this year de Goede, six feet and a solid 180 pounds, has upped her game and repeated as OUA top player.

Sophs a generational player, states her Queens coach, Dan Valley, who moonlights as an assistant with the Canadian senior womens club. Shes humble and helpful, a collection, really, of every positive sports cliche out there, an absolutely incredible talent and ultimate team player.

On the hardwood, de Goede isnt exactly taking up space.

In her freshman year, she played nearly 20 minutes a game and averaged seven rebounds and a hair under 10 points per outing. Despite missing half of her second season due to an injury sustained at the 2018 rugby nationals, she still finished second on the Gaels in rebounds.

Shes already a solid, dependable player, womens basketball coach James Bambury notes on his heady, agile charge, and we expect she will take a giant leap this season because of the commitment she made to the team this summer. He alludes to a month of training that de Goede put in with her hoops mates prior to leaving for the rugby Super Series, then an additional month after she returned.

Shes so versatile, the coach adds. Were comfortable using her at any position, one through five. She can run, shoot, pass, defend, rebound and has phenomenal vision on the floor.

Because the two sports overlap slightly, Bambury says de Goede, 20, will not play in any basketball games until the rugby campaign is over. With the (rugby) national championship on the table, we wont interfere. An exception was made for the recent McGill/Queens exhibition game commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first university womens basketball tilt between the same two schools. Citing its historical significance, de Goede asked to play, then went out and drained a team-high 20 points in her 20 minutes of floor time.

The pursuit of higher education is proceeding well. Now its time to chase down a national title. The unbeaten Gaels rugby unit, with its two-sport linchpin leading the way, competes in the eight-team U Sports womens rugby championship tournament, Oct. 30 to Nov. 3, in Ottawa.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com

See the article here:
Two-sport star shines for Queen's Gaels, national rugby teams - The Kingston Whig-Standard

One of the more recent trends among parents-to-be is the so-called gender reveal, a party complete with pink or blue cake to answer the burning question, Is it a boy or girl? After all, its presumed that theres a 50-50 chance youd have one or the other. In a new article published in Current Biology, Michigan Medicine researchers studying the sex chromosomes have discovered genes that, at least in mice, skew that assumed ratio to favor one sex and that could have major implications for male infertility.

There are a handful of genes known to underlie male infertility but theres still a lot unknown, says Alyssa Kruger, a Ph.D. student within the Department of Human Genetics. Kruger, who works in the lab of principal investigator Jacob Mueller, Ph.D., and their colleagues have been studying the X and Y chromosomes which are delivered by sperm to an egg to determine an offsprings sexacross species and across millions of years of evolution.

Sex chromosomes are unique, Kruger explains, because while they were once an identical pair of chromosomes, they independently evolved distinct sets of genes. Upon examining mice sex chromosomes, they found two recently evolved X-linked gene families that are found only in mice. Interestingly, these genes are also present multiple copies. To figure out what the genes are responsible for, Krugers team removed them from the genomes of some mice using CRISPR and other technologies.

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Removing all copies of one X-linked gene family produced mice whose offspring were biased towards being male by a ratio of 60-40. This discrepancy wasnt a result of more Y-bearing spermthe number of X and Y sperm remained the same in the mice. This suggests to us that this gene is impacting the relative fitness of X versus Y sperm, but we dont know how. Maybe the Y-bearing sperm are swimming faster or in a straighter line, we dont yet know, says Kruger.

Next, the team decided to increase the copy number of both X-linked gene families to get a better sense of why there are multiple copies. They duplicated these regions of the genome and surprisingly, this also skewed the sex ratio 60-40, only this time in favor of female offspring.

Kruger says that these X-linked gene families appear to be a dial for the fitness of X-bearing sperm. Interestingly, a related gene family on the Y-chromosome is also present in multiple copies and may serve an analogous role in Y-bearing sperm. The same sex-skewing has been observed in other experiments using fruit flies and, she says, something similar could be present in humans, though harder to observe. We think of the back and forth copying of these genes as kind of an evolutionary arms race between the X and Y chromosomes that has played out over 20 million years to maintain the 50-50 male to female sex ratio.

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Beyond their sex-ratio effects, an important feature of the two genes is that their complete removal leads to male mouse infertility.

Specifically, removing all copies of both X-linked gene families prevented male mice from producing sperm; they were unable to transform round cells to the elongated cells with a head and tail we recognize as sperm. Says Kruger, There are a lot of cellular processes that have to happen that arent. We hope this model will give us a better understanding of the developmental process of sperm production.

Other than Kruger and Mueller, this work involved U-M researchers Michele A. Brogley, Jamie L. Huizinga, and Jeffrey M. Kidd, Ph.D.

Paper Cited: A neofunctionalized X-linked ampliconic gene family is essential for male fertility and equal sex ratio in mice Current Biology, 2019. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.08.057

Link:
Genes Linked to Sex Ratio and Male Fertility in Mice - Michigan Medicine

AS producers continue to reshape their drought strategies, the term core breeder group is a common one. Many producers refer to their core breeders, however the definition of these animals is much harder to establish.

Often, when pressed, the description is that the core breeders are the good ones or the reliable ones. Many producers also refer to the genetics that have been invested in the animals or the selection that has been used to create the herd.

While these points are all equally valid, there is also a high level of emotional value attached to these cattle. This often clouds the decision-making process around the animals, and in drought situations this can restrict timely and well-considered decisions.

Defining a core breeder should be an objective process, based solidly in the breeding objectives of a program. The key attributes must come down to those that will directly contribute to the productivity and profitability of the business, particular in the drought recovery phase.

Fertility underpins this attribute. While many producers have already removed from the herd those cows that failed to conceive or rear a calf, this doesnt automatically mean that any female left is a core breeder. Within the group of pregnant females, or those that have now calved, there will be a group which consistently join and calve later.

These females are often forgiven for their later conception because they still produce a calf.

Perhaps in normal seasons this tolerance is understandable, however in drought conditions where decisions on numbers have to be made, this is a group that can become a focus for removal.

This not only reduces some pressure, but also in the longer term will add to the herds fertility and productivity levels.

Genetics are often cited as a key attribute for retention of breeders. While there are often valid reasons for this, there are equally as many herds where this reason is overstated.

As descried in last weeks Beef Central genetics review, there is generally a lag between a seedstock operation and the commercial producer. Bull selection contributes to this lag, particularly if the bulls entering a program are of average or just above average genetic merit.

Not every producer purchases bulls that are in the top EBV percentiles. The practical implication is that the herd these bulls are used in will, genetically, be some time behind leading operations.

The practical outcome is that many herds are perhaps not as genetically superior as many of their owners believe.

As discussed last week, selection pressure and generational interval are two of the options producers have to increase their rates of genetic gain. The drought places a high degree of selection pressure on females. This should be combined with selection from producers to focus on the other attributes that are important in achieving breeding outcomes.

The opportunity to remove females for later or earlier maturity patterns is an obvious one. Often the later-maturity, larger-framed animals are the first to go in a drought, in order to reduce feed demand. Still, this is an opportunity not to overlook.

Selection decisions on structure and temperament are also important.

The other key to moving a breeder into the core breeder group is to assess her past history and to evaluate her calves at weaning. Which females are those that consistently calve early, and then wean heavier calves?

Calving early is not enough to make a core breeder. Its important to capitalise on early calving by having high growth to weaning.

These assessments are often the ones that separate a group of breeding cows into average cows and then a group of core animals.

Not ever animal will display the traits and performance that makes them a productive and profitable female. However in a drought where decisions are often being made about animals, having an objective assessment and considering these areas can add some clarity to the decision-making process.

While selection pressure particularly nutritional pressure from the season will help sort breeders out, its essential to add the objective scrutiny on each animal in order to find those leading animals.

Its equally important to consider past bull purchases, and objectively consider if that bull was a genetically superior animal or if he was in the good-to-average category.

This can help take some of the emotional investment out of the selection on genetics, and open up the opportunity to focus on finding genetically better bulls ahead of the next joining season.

Remaining focussed on the key traits and using objective assessments and performance data from past years is an essential requirement to find the most valuable breeding animals.

Without these considerations it will be very hard to separate a core animal from an average breeder.

Alastair Rayner

Alastair Rayner is the Principal of RaynerAg, an agricultural advisory service based in NSW. He regularly attends bull sales to support client purchases and undertakes pre sale selections and classifications. He can be contacted here or through his website http://www.raynerag.com.au

More:
Weekly genetics review: Defining the 'core breeder' in times of drought - Beef Central

An early October blizzard hit western South Dakota six years ago. It was named Storm Atlas. Three-plus feet of sudden snow devastated cattle and calves still out on summer pastures.

It was a disastrous blow to ranchers both in loss of livestock, genetics and cattle they had been raising for generations, as well as a huge financial loss.

I was in the Black Hills speaking at an agricultural event with South Dakota ranching women attendees. My plan was to drive to my next speaking event in western North Dakota. But instead, I was stranded at a lodge, without electricity, with 30 or so female ranchers and women in agriculture (and a few husbands) plus a national tour group waiting to see Mount Rushmore.

Every early fall I think of the storm, a couple of days of no electricity, no heat other than the fireplace in the main lobby of the lodge and lodge staff preparing food for guests on the one gas stove in the lodge, using ingredients and meat from what was supposed to be prepared into a feast for a weekend outdoor wedding. Instead, it fed those of us stranded.

There were no generators or snow blowers and all roads and our vehicles were covered in 38 inches of snow. We had two shovels and worked together when the snow stopped. We flagged down a road crew to help.

The messy memories arent what I recall annually though.

Its the people who made the difference in Storm Atlas. The ranchers who sat around, unable to leave, but trying to get ahold of their families at home to check on their livestock.

The losses would be deep for these families I knew. You could expect them to be bitter at the circumstances they had no control over, and instead, they chose to be better.

As we sat in front of the fire at the lodge, the group of ranch and farm women planned outreach and fundraising to help those in agriculture who would need a hand up in the months to recover from Storm Atlas.

They didnt grab headlines but raised awareness and aid that positively impacted others in need. Ranching women chose to better together.

At the same time, I remember a tour group attendee demanding she get a ride to the airport and saying she was leaving South Dakota. The staff tried to explain there were no flights and absolutely no way to get her out of the closed highways of the Black Hills. The woman couldnt change her circumstances and bitterly expressed her frustration.

Here we are, in another set of devastating circumstances for many in agriculture in our region. Its not from one storm event but most likely the wettest early fall on record.

Water fills our farm fields and the anticipation for harvest fades for some as worry or anxiety sets in. Its been a limited growing season with numerous setbacks.

We cannot control the weather. We can care for one another. We can choose to support one another through communication and awareness, and create a path that gives others an outlet to show support. You do not have to be in a specific industry or be an expert in anything to support and encourage those struggling in a season of difficulty.

Communicate about the setbacks your region is faced with, not just grumbling over coffee with your family or the neighbors, but with your elected officials, online and offline.

Reach out to the media (thats us) with a unique experience or story your farm or community has never experienced before this season.

Check-in on your farming friends and neighbors. Help plan or volunteer at a community event. Youre not alone in difficult times. Choose to be better from a time that could make us bitter. There will be more storms, blizzards, droughts and then too much rain in our lives. We cannot control the rain, the sunshine or frost date.

We can be better through outreach to one another and communication to make sure agricultures story is shared with those nearby and far from our fields.

Katie Pinke is the publisher of Agweek, a weekly agriculture newspaper published by Forum Communications Co.

Read this article:
When we could be bitter, choose to be better - PostBulletin.com

The topics of women and mental health typically intersect at an uncomfortable point that, like so many other core elements of our society, is rooted in the patriarchy. The practice and dissemination of the mental health arts was a prototypical male profession as it emerged in the late 1800s and early 1900s, its central modern figures mostly men (Freud, Pavlov, Kanner, Lacan). The code of ethics and modus operandi of psychoanalysis was forged around the implicit idea that the examiner is male and the patient could be of any gender.

But the first people in analysis were overwhelmingly female, like Freuds oft-written about patient, Dora, and the hundreds of Victorian women diagnosed with everything from hysteria to sociopathy; now, with depression and anxiety. Decades of over-diagnosing and experimentally treating women is mirrored in literature by a parade of insane women locked up attics, from the narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilmans 1892 short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, through the Gothic masterpieces, to the cornucopia of unwell women in the 1999 film, Girl, Interrupted.

Society has had no problem gaslighting women for the better part of modernity, pinning on us an array of nervous ailments presented as specifically female disorders. This perceived propensity toward hormonally-induced and nervous conditions has been used against us to impugn our abilities and capability to perform high-functioning and managerial tasks. The trope of the crazy girlfriend informs contemporary relationships in real life as much as in sitcoms; our female CEOs and politicians still struggle to demonstrate a steely immunity to sentiment beyond what is required of their male counterparts, lest they be accused of acting unstable.

This is not to say that mental illness in men is portrayed in a better, more empathetic way. Male characters with psychiatric conditions are also grossly exaggerated, written as roles that give actors the opportunity to deliver over-the-top performances like Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lechter, Christian Bales American Psycho, and the menagerie of psychopaths and perverts that populate the Law and Order franchises. By now its become clear that none of these stereotypes and hyperboles benefit the still-stigmatized view of mental illness in our culture. And while no one is a winner, men are the ones being left behind in our attempt to conquer this stigma.

The kernel of truth buried deep within these unhelpful representations is that in real life men and women both experience and exhibit mental health challenges differently, due to possible biological and clear social reasons. For example, a 2003 British study shows that while women statistically report symptoms of depression and anxiety two and a half times more frequently than men, many more men than women seek help for substance abuse issues. The evidence on PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) shows a far greater incidence in women (20.4%) than men (8.1%), clearly explained by the far greater incidence of sexual assaults on women worldwide.

But mental health providers dont know for sure whether women biologically are primed to experienced mood disorders, eating disorders, and OCD symptoms or if its the centuries of stress we feel as caretakers, organizers, and householders has been resulted in the development of these conditions. Studies seem to show men and women experience mental health issues equally, despite our physiological differences, but that the social trauma we are subjected to in our culture makes us more prone to some symptoms more than others, like dementia, but also feelings like sadness, and apathy.

We cannot decide whether women are more likely to experience depression because we are biologically primed to perform feats of hormonal dexterity (like menstruating and birthing children), or if its because of the patriarchy keeps us mentally in a homebound space. We dont know if its just that men rage, self-medicate, and develop more chemical dependence issues because of their genetics and hormones, or if our culture prohibits them sadness and gives them too much time to hang out at the bar. Like in most nature/nurture debates, each of these are likely factors, as is the conditioning with which mental health providers recognize and treat those who need it. The sword of stigma is sharp and it cuts both ways.

Women have long been victimized, making us prone to certain conditions. Weve then been oppressed by the over-diagnosis and treatments for some of these conditions. Men have been all but abandoned. We are for this reason the best equipped to help men get the visibility they need in this sphere, one of the few in which they didnt take up the spotlight. This fact alone: the rate of male suicide in the United States exceeds womens four to one. Though women are twice as likely to experience mental health concerns and seek treatment, mens reluctance to admit to the struggle and to commit to medication when it is indicated, drives four times as many of them to a final and irrevocable resort.

A ten-year study conducted by the National Institutes of Health probes the likelihood that men will seek support in one another the way women often do. The results did not surprise me, as it seems quite clear in our culture that men are not encouraged to speak about their feelings. The vast majority of the test subjects, who ranged in age, marital status, and socioeconomic advantage, would consider speaking to a woman about their feelings and fears but would not even consider talking to another man. Many admitted to feeling primed to shame any man who would try.

Men compartmentalize relationships, meaning guys have no problem paling around town with their buddies for hours on end, but they may never have a single deep conversation in all that time. Those talks, they save for their wives, girlfriends, and mothers. Feelings are considered to be our territory and men grossly lack social supports to help them through tough times. They may have a social network but it provides them too small a net.

Meanwhile, women have found ways to rely on one another to fill in the gaps between or replace ineffective medical treatments. This safety net might even stand in for treatment, even insufficiently, in that it wont necessarily best manage the issue, but our social connections seems to be keeping more of us in the fight. Even bearing the brunt of motherhood and raising children makes women more likely to stick around for the benefit of our kids.

Men rely on women for connection, but many men dont have women in their circles. Some dont even know to seek these connections out. As the mother of boys, I definitely see that the trope that women talk about their problems while men muscle through begins early. We still need much work on that as a society, but in order to effectively reach anyone who needs treatment, we have to dig deeper than even each other. More surprising to me than the gendering of the stigma is that mental illness itself is still taboo in 2019. Most people who suffer from mental illness need professional help to get better even talking to good friends wont be enough. And while women are doing better than men in seeking assistance and following through with treatment, both genders are still underreporting our own symptoms.

According to the World Health Organization, physicians tend to under diagnose psychological conditions, with a rate of accuracy of less than 50%. We can imagine that this is because an average doctors visit is short and highly specialized, so that we might be dragging ourselves through a cloud of depression to get to the ENT, but shell spend three and a half minutes diagnosing a sinus infection and miss the signs of our sadness while shes writing out the script.

Mental health screenings are not routine parts of medical examinations, except for the first few postpartum checkups for women who have the opportunity to become mothers (and even this has been proven insufficient to fully address maternal depression). This inadequate check-in excludes all other female patients and men. As patients, we are lacking in the confidence or perhaps the information to reach out, unprompted, to our providers. Only 2 out of every 5 people who experience anxiety, mood, or substance dependence disorders report them to a doctor within the first year of struggle.

This all amounts to a public health crisis, in which mental health conditions are both known to be debilitating to the sufferer and fairly common, but seemingly out of helps reach if we dont find a way to break the taboo. Depression and its offshoots is projected to reach the number two spot in causes of global disability by 2020. While the figures indicate that all genders could use a little more help than they are currently receiving, dispelling the myth around mens mental health specifically might be the last taboo we need to kill to finally give everyone the psychological support they need.

As much as it has been a grueling millennium under the male psychiatric gaze, our high visibility as patients has afforded us women a much greater emotional literacy than our male counterparts. Men have difficulty finding someone to talk to and accepting their own vulnerability, but they likely dont even know what symptoms mean or realize they manifest differently.

If men are conditioned to think that depression is only manifest as sadness and sadness is weakness and weakness is for women, how are they supposed to realize that depression to them might feel like anger, instead? Since men, especially in some cultures, are not socially expected to multitask between work inside and outside of the home, how would they know that they would actually be capable of far more if they took care of their mental health?

An essential step in dispelling the myths that prevent men from getting the help they need is a reminder that disease does not discriminate and they are vulnerable to the same conditions we are. Next, we all need to be better educated on how these conditions manifest. While a depressed woman might recognize listlessness as a symptom, a man who engages in high-risk behavior might not be able to confront that this is a result of an underlying condition and not a socially-encouraged show of virility. Symptoms vary from one individual to another, and we are particularly ignorant about behaviors that appear to be more prevalent amongst men.

The time to get acquainted with the hallmarks of mental conditions is now. According to reports recently published in Mens Health, depression and anxiety are affecting men at increasing rates. The incidence of suicide among men is also alarmingly on the rise.

Horrifying headlines over the last decade are also strong indicators that men do not realize that aggression and violent behavior are such indicators until its too late for their victims. The people around them dont recognize that unusual thinking and behaviors often announce serious underlying conditions, like personality disorders. Suicidal thoughts are the most extreme symptoms and yet these, too, often go unrecognized.

Very rarely, but perhaps this is one of those times when the thing that helped instigate the problem might contain part of the solution. As women, we suffered overrepresentation as mental health patients in popular culture for too many decades. This unjustly molded the image of the female patient into a grotesque cartoon, yes, but weve stayed on the radar of the profession. What if men dont see their own issues because they have such dearth of representation that cant even imagine what mental illness looks or feels like?

In the last decade, beloved and prominent men in the arts have left us by suicide, and the general feeling among circles both close and distant has been great surprise to know their suffering. And what about decades prior and the men we lost to reckless behavior and overdoses? We lacked the information and experience to understand that Belushi, Farley, and Jackson were struggling as Hoffman, Williams, Foster Wallace would. We arent yet good enough at recognizing the behaviors that announce what men have been trying hard to hide from view. Our best vaccination in the face of this epidemic is to turn to Hollywood and the media again, now for some help and visibility.

By now we know and must disseminate that men, too, suffer from body dysmorphia, eating disorders, panic attacks/anxiety, and depression, even the postpartum kind. We are indebted as a society to actors like Dwayne The Rock Johnsons, who has revealed he has suffered from depression; to athletes like Kevin Love (from the Cleveland Cavaliers), who shared he has experienced panic attacks; to performers like Zayn Malik, who has identified himself as someone struggling with anxiety and an eating disorder. When even the alpha men amongst us can seek help, their street cred untarnished, whats stopping the rest of us from seeking help?

As those who have the megaphone continue to increase public knowledge of mens mental health issues, the wellness industry, which is also female-dominated, can also do its part to remind everyone that physical and mental health are connected. We all need to internalize how biological and environmental factors can contribute to our mental well-being and that there is a wide range of symptoms that can announce underlying problems. Hopefully by becoming better informed and discussing mental health equitable and in the open, we can help our brothers out.

More:
How Women Can Help Kill the Taboo Around Mental Health and Men - BELatina

Founded in 2012, Copenhagen-based Goodiebox provides a monthly subscription for a box of beauty products for women. The startup has also developed its own range of cosmetics and skin care products under the name Comme Deux, based on hundreds of thousands of insights from Goodiebox members.

At the moment, Goodiebox has approximately 100,000 subscribers (or as they call them, members) in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and soon in Germany.

Interestingly, this beauty tech startup was founded by two men,Rasmus Schmiegelow (CEO) and Nikolaj Leonhard-Hjorth (CMO).

Below, Rasmus shares his experiences founding the startup (and as a man working in a womans world), and what beauty tech holds in store for us in the future.

Please tell us about yourself, your story, and where you got the idea for Goodiebox.

Im 45, married to an amazing woman (Therese) with three energetic boys (Sebastian, Nor and Kristoffer) and living in the center of Copenhagen. Im also a qualified lawyer, having worked with venture capital and especially M&A with big law firms in Copenhagen and London (DLA Piper and Moalem Weitemeyer Bendtsen) as well as big corporates (Maersk).

My co-founder Nikolaj (who also happens to be my best friend going 25 years back) and I got the idea for Goodiebox in December 2011 and launched the first box in February 2012 to our initial 500 members in Denmark.

The main goal of Goodiebox is to create as much happiness as possible; for our members, employees and partners. This has been the core of Goodiebox since day one, and with over 125 employees and over 100k members this is still the guiding principle in all we do. Nikolaj and I wanted to create a company that we ourselves would have done everything to get to work for.

Further, we saw that a gigantic sector beauty and cosmetics (worth $560 billion globally) was still controlled by a few legacy players and only approximately 7% of global sales were digital. The way to reach consumers was changing with social media and we could have European (and global) access to consumers (for us members) much faster than before, when you also needed brick and mortar retail.

Tell us about Goodiebox what problems do you solve, and what are your offerings?

At Goodiebox one of our fundamental ambitions is to help our members discover new products and brands they will love. Normally in e-commerce, you can try before you buy (if you buy a new pair of jeans from Zalando, Asos or Net-a-porter, you can return them if they dont fit), but that is not possible with beauty and cosmetics (if you buy a new lipstick online you cannot try it and return if the color is not right).

But with Goodiebox, the members get to try new beauty products and brands (based on their beauty profile and feedback in general) so they know their new favourites before they order online.

We can offer this because our internal team of beauty experts is at the forefront of beauty trends, and works closely together with our internal team of data and consumer experts to track and analyse behaviours of our members. We can then use this information to predict what our members will like thereby creating more happiness for them.

Of course happiness is difficult to define, but there are various proxies that we at Goodiebox use to quantify it. Some are explicit, for example, we track how much customers like certain products via star ratings where the members earn Goodiepoints. We also track and analyse implicit signals, including which members end up buying the products they receive in their boxes; changes in subscription status (suspensions, pauses); and member referrals to name a few.

To best source and assign beauty products to our members, we are developing a predictive model that can predict how each member will like each beauty product and their Goodiebox as a whole.

We now help Goodiebox members in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Germany (from November) find their new favourite beauty products and brands.

Your startup was founded in 2012. What was it like starting out, and what were some of the challenges you faced?

When we started, Nikolaj and I took on all roles in Goodiebox. From sourcing beauty products over customer service to marketing and tech. Luckily Nikolaj came from a marketing and branding background, as my learning curve as a lawyer was pretty steep!

Furthermore, we were bootstrapped our initial five years in Denmark, with lots of ups and downs. And it was only when we had perfected the model and had control of the key metrics that we got investors in. Since our first investment in May 2017 we have been able to increase our growth significantly still with sustainable key metrics even when growing membership three-fold year on year.

Our insane focus on putting members first in all we did helped us a lot when we needed to prioritise and make difficult decisions. And the members would forgive us more easily when we made mistakes (and we made a lot) because they never doubted our intentions. They knew we wanted to build a new beauty company that would put the members first. Always.

Also, having a real product (the Goodiebox) we needed to source products for, pick and pack, and then ship to our members was a real operational challenge, and we spent many late evenings and nights packing boxes and doing personal deliveries.

Whats it like to be a male founder of a beauty tech company?

Being a male founder in beauty tech has given me and Goodiebox an edge, as it has forced me to be humble from the start and not take anything for granted. And I have used data and business intelligence more; as I have not been raised knowing which beauty products are better than others. Also, as a male founder, Ive had to earn the trust from our female members.

But I have learned a lot in the last seven years (and still learning) from great members and our amazing team. And I would call myself a beauty-expert now. I have definitely tested, used and read more about beauty products and trends than any of my friends

How is beauty tech changing?

Personalisation enabled by tech will change the beauty industry using AI and gene technology. We are already seeing the first smart serums and 3D printed makeup. Innovators from the worlds of tech and beauty are visualising and developing hyperpersonalised beauty products right now, and theyll be in our hands as early as next year. For example, Atolla is making smart serums that treat your skins unique needs and predicts how your complexion will change over time to help prevent breakouts, redness and sensitivities based on an app using a similar algorithm as Netflix, so it learns more about your skin the more you use it (their founder previously worked in 3D printing).

Tech will also enable us to create skin care products based on genetics. Making it possible to predict how our skin will age and how to reverse course based on an evaluation of our genetic makeup. For example, as we get older certain genes flip on triggering enzymes that break down collagen and causing wrinkles. But if we realise thats happening on a molecular level, we can use prescription ingredients to quiet the overactive genes and normalise the skin. So the key to truly smooth skin could be written in your DNA.

Youve been growing rapidly entering seven new markets in just 16 months, and you now reach 100k customers. What has this experience been like, and what have been some of the challenges youve faced expanding into new markets?

The last 18 months have been insane in every aspect.

This year alone, 76 new people have joined Goodiebox and we now have a team of 126 super talented people from 17 different nationalities creating happiness for our members and partners every day working with marketing, tech, operations, design, content, member experience, people development partnerships, business intelligence, talent acquisition, finance and business development. We have gone from one office in Copenhagen to opening new offices in Amsterdam, Berlin and London as well.

Growing the organisation this fast has been a challenge as Nikolaj and I have the ambition that Goodiebox should be the best place to work at. Making sure that we have the structures and processes in place have been very demanding and we are not 100% yet. Also, making sure that we have the same Goodiebox culture in the different offices and within the different teams have been challenging. One of my main responsibilities is now to make sure we have Goodiebox culture across the teams and offices.

It has also been a very real challenge to learn the cultural differences among members in Scandinavia, Benelux and DACH. The Goodiebox version of happiness working in Denmark is not working 1:1 in Austria. Making sure that we on group level oversee what is working in the different markets so we can support local growth and content teams in the best possible way has been difficult and we have experimented a lot before we found the right scalable formula.

What do your customers enjoy the most about your service? Whats your most popular product / product line?

We are member-centric in everything we do. The members are really the starting point for all our activities and we have a very bold ambition of having the happiest members in the world. We really want to be best friends with our members. This is the reason why we dont have customer service but Team Happiness, not agents but Happiness Heroes, not tickets, but conversations and KPIs for keeping the conversations as long as possible (the record for a phone call is 4 hours and 48 minutes).

So our members really like our products but they love our insanely great service. Which is also reflected in our TrustScore on Trustpilot and NPS of over 70. We know that we got to earn this trust and dedication from our members and just because we did great with our Danish members yesterday we still need to prove ourselves for all our new members across Europe tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Where do you see Goodiebox in another five years?

In five years Goodiebox will have over two million members across Europe, US and Asia with personalised boxes based on AI and member preferences.

But Goodiebox is more than a great box with awesome beauty products. We really want to create an emotional connection with our members and give them happy moments not just when they receive their Goodiebox, but everyday. So in five years Goodiebox are creating great content (podcasts, videos, long-reads etc.) with members and other external partners. Not just on beauty but on all aspects of life making you happy.

Finally, over the last five years Goodiebox have created several beauty brands based on all the insights and learnings from members in Europe, US and Asia. Our own Comme Deux is the first brand co-created with the members and the initial feedback is amazing. Utilizing tech and feedback from millions of members, we can create relevant products brands to every beauty consumer taking DtC beauty to the next level. We call it DwC (direct-with-consumer) brands.

Read more:
Shaping the future of beauty tech: Interview with Goodiebox CEO and co-founder Rasmus Schmiegelow - EU-Startups

The study team invited and interviewed a total of 42 participants, including 7 parous and 7 nulliparous women from each of the three study countries; no participant declined to be interviewed. All interviews were recorded except for one, where the recording device failed and the interviewer took notes instead. Participants included 15 from the tramadol group (3 in Nepal, 8 in South Africa, and 4 in Vietnam), 16 from the ibuprofen/metoclopramide (ibu/met) group (7 in Nepal, 3 in South Africa, 6 in Vietnam), and 11 from the placebo group (4 in Nepal, 3 in South Africa, 4 in Vietnam). The median age of participants was 23 (range: 1844, IQR=20-32). Most participants in South Africa were single (n=13), while most participants in Nepal and Vietnam were married (Nepal: 11, Vietnam: 8) or partnered (Vietnam: 6). One-third of the sample had completed secondary school, and 64% had completed more than secondary school; 43% of participants were currently in school. All except 3 participants in South Africa lived in urban areas (see Table1). Food insecurity was reported by only one woman in Nepal, who responded that she often went without food in her household.

Among parous participants, the average number of previous pregnancies was 2 in Nepal, 1.7 in South Africa, and 3.1 in Vietnam. One-quarter of the sample reported having a previous abortion (only in Nepal and Vietnam), and three participants had previous MA experience. The average gestational age at presentation was 49days (SD: 7.8, range: 3463days); Nepal and Vietnam had similar averages (47 and 46days respectively) while South Africas average was 55days. On a 10-point scale, the average overall pain level reported with MA was 5.2 (SD: 2.5). The average highest pain in the first 8h after misoprostol was 6.6 (SD: 2.5), ranging from 6.1 in Nepal to 6.7 in Vietnam and 7.1 in South Africa. All participants had a successful medical abortion without any further treatment.

The following four themes emerged from the content analysis: pain and other side effects of the MA; medical abortion pain relative to menstrual, labor, and previous abortion pain; pain management; and emotional experiences (see Table2). We explore these four themes below.

Based on participant descriptions, we identified four types of pain trajectories. Ten respondents reported minimal pain overall (4 Nepal, 4 South Africa, 2 Vietnam). One said, I never had an abortion, so I was expecting more pain but there was no pain. It was just normal; I was doing the house chores I am used to doing (3135 y, South Africa, parous, placebo). Another explained, It wasnt painful at all, not even a little. There was no such feeling of pain. Only when the pregnancy started to discharge, there was a feeling of something coming out, like when Im on my period but there was absolutely no pain (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, tramadol).

Eight participants reported brief intense pain and said it occurred right before expulsion. One participant said, It hurt terribly, it hurt in a way that its very unlike any normal pain I had 30 minutes of intense pain, after that I felt better, then gradually it eased and then I could walk as usual (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, tramadol). Nine participants experienced intermittent pain, which some described as similar to labor contractions: It pained and disappeared and again pained and again disappeared (2125 y, Nepal, nulliparous, placebo). Another participant explained, I think its like labor pain, intermittent pain from light pain to heavy pain (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, ibu/met). And five participants described feeling constant pain for an hour up to several hours: The pains were like 10 for about 3 or 4 hours there was no change. The pains were constant (1820 y, South Africa, nulliparous, ibu/met). There were no distinct trends in pain trajectories by treatment group, age, parity, or country.

The most commonly reported symptoms were chills and shivering (12), nausea (9), vomiting (8), fever (8), and diarrhea (8), with no clear trends by parity, treatment group, or country. One participant said, I felt really cold, and I was shivering even when I was staying in the sun, it still felt cold (1820 y, Nepal, nulliparous, ibu/met). Another reported, Diarrhea was the most intolerable. It made my stomach gurgle and I felt nauseous so I needed to go to the bathroom constantly even though I felt cold and just wanted to stay in my bed the diarrhea and nausea were the worst (2125 y, Vietnam, nulliparous, tramadol). Five participants reported weakness and/or dizziness: I tolerated the pain for half an hour, it was all because of dizziness that I couldnt tolerate the pain (2125 y, Nepal, nulliparous, tramadol). Five participants said they had numbness or immobility (under the tongue or in the limbs). One woman described, it felt so numb with painI think it was because of the pills melting. I think they made me feel that way (3640 y, South Africa, parous, tramadol). Another said, There was no abdominal pain. Only my limbs, it felt like I cant handle it anymore, I felt paralyzedIt hurt terribly, it hurt in a way that its very unlike any normal pain, I have never experienced such kind of pain. My limbs couldnt even move (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, tramadol). All but one participant in Vietnam and over half of the Nepal participants (9) reported at least one symptom beyond pain, while only 6 participants in South Africa reported symptoms.

MA was reportedly more painful than menstruation for most participants who commented on the comparison regardless of parity or treatment group (23 vs. 9 who reported MA as less or similarly painful compared to menstruation) and less painful than labor (17 vs. 4 who reported MA as more or similarly painful compared to labor). Respondents compared overall pain of the current MA with pain in menstruation, labor, and previous abortion using one or more of the following factors: pain intensity, pain duration, associated symptoms and side effects, and response to pain medications. One woman ranked her experiences in terms of intensity and duration: the least painful was suction abortion, at level 7-8 but only for a short period of time. The second one would be the recent [medical] abortion, heavy bleeding hurt at level 9-10. Third one is my second labor, pain level was at 7-8 but lasted longer than the abortion. And my first labor hurt the most, pain level 9-10 and lasted incredibly long (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, ibu/met).

With regard to pain intensity, one participant said, This one wasnt that bad at all, I didnt even feel like I was doing an abortion, there wasnt a lot of pains. So the menstruation one is the worse one if I were to compare them (2125 y, South Africa, parous, ibu/met). In contrast, another said, the abortion gave me heavy painit was more painful than the period pains (3640 y, South Africa, parous, tramadol). Several participants who had previous abortions attributed lower pain levels in the current abortion to the use of pain medications: The bleeding was same on both times. But the pain was more in previous abortion than this time. I also didnt have much difficulty as I took [pain] medicine this timeMaybe that is why compared to the previous abortion I didnt feel much pain (2630 y, Nepal, parous, tramadol). Another said that just having pain medications easily available to her made the experience better: During my previous abortion, I wasnt told to do anything if I had pain. So this time I had medicine if I had pain, even though I didnt take it so it felt really good. Instead of going out and buying the medicine, when one has a packet with themselves they can easily take it (3640 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met). One more explained, If I have to compare, [this time] was painful for less time while using medicine during my last abortionit was 6-7 on scale for 6-7 days. But this time even if the pain was 10 on scale, it got lessened after having medicine (3135 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met).

Most parous participants explained that the pain intensity of labor was much higher than MA: It was nothing compared to my labor pain, because my labor pain was extremethe labor is the worst, then comes the suction abortion, finally the pain from this abortion using medicine (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, ibu/met). Another explained, labor pains were highermaybe 5 to 1. Labor pain 5 and abortion pain 1 (2125 y, South Africa, parous, tramadol).

Duration of pain in menstruation was shorter and typically predictable for most participants, whereas with MA, it was less predictable and occurred throughout the experience. One participant explained, For menstruation, it pains a little on the first day and then it doesnt pain. But during abortion, it was paining on the first day and on the third day (2630 y, Nepal, parous, tramadol). Another said, I dont get pain during every menstruationI feel pain for one day only. During abortion as well, I had pain for a day only. That is why I feel its the same (3135 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met). Those who reported previous abortions often determined which experience was more painful by comparing duration of bleeding and pain. One participant said she preferred her previous MA to the current one because the time it took to expel the pregnancy was longer this time and her pain was delayed (4145 y, Vietnam, parous, placebo). Similarly in childbirth, participants attributed higher overall pain to a longer duration of pain: when I delivered my child, the whole day I felt like the time when I had my abortion (3135 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met).

For many, the comparison of pain in MA with that of menstruation or labor was dependent on symptoms other than pain alone. For example, one participant said, My period pain is just normal, but [with MA] it was twisting and I had diarrhea and fever also, chills and shaking. Thats the difference (2125 y, Vietnam, nulliparous, tramadol). Another said, Normal delivery is painful because of many reasons, for example episiotomy.because theres no factors like that, MA is much less painful (4145 y, Vietnam, parous, placebo). Another added, With giving birth, beside labor pain, you suffer also from the tear of vagina afterward, which prolonged the pain. After the abortion, you only suffer for 1 day (2630 y, Vietnam, parous, ibu/met).

Ten participants (6 Vietnam, 4 Nepal) reported a previous abortion and compared it to their current experience. Some women explained that the lack of instruments helped reduce their pain or anxiety levels with the current MA compared to a previous surgical abortion. One woman said, this time hurt more than last time but was less scary because I didnt have to listen to the sound of the surgical tools, so there was less mental pain the clanking sound of surgical tools scared me (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, ibu/met). Another said it was much less painful, my psyche was much at ease, and it was more privateI feel quite embarrassed every time I have gynecology check. Like taking my clothes off and checking, thats what makes me feel not comfortable at all (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, ibu/met). Another who had experienced three surgical abortions highlighted the importance of supportive, non-judgmental providers:

In my other previous abortions there was just me in the room. The doctors were scary and the things they said really annoyed me, like I don't want to do this. It's just that you asked for it, so I felt very uncomfortable. I had to accept it. I had a wonderful consultation this time, I was able to do self-check at home, and I had my relatives next to me and also someone to talk to during the process. Time went by really fast. I felt stronger mentally not feeling like abandoned in the room like any of those previous abortionsthis time was more painful but more relieved. I felt safer since the surgical ones are scary, not as painful but much more scary. (31-35 y, Vietnam, parous, tramadol).

One participant said the current abortion was worse than her previous experience because she had an incomplete abortion that required her to have multiple follow-up visits (although she did not have additional treatment).

Most reported that the study medications eased MA pain. One participant said, Because they not only gave me medicine when I was in pain but before I had pain they had given me medicine. So I felt my pain got cured after taking medicine. I didnt have to take additional medicine (2125 y, Nepal, parous, tramadol). However, it was not always clear if participants were referring to the study medications or the additional analgesics taken as needed as being responsible for the pain relief. One respondent said, It was very satisfying because if it wasnt for the medication I would have slept in pain (2125 y, South Africa, nulliparous, tramadol). Another commented, After having the medicine, it lessened my pain and I felt like eating as well. I had a fear that if something might happen, after the pain was gone, I felt that I am fine now (3135 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met).

For managing pain in general (not specific to MA), some South African women reported taking medications including paracetamol and aspirin; only a few women in Nepal and Vietnam reported taking medications for more extreme pain. A woman from Nepal said, If sometimes I have more pain and I have to go for duty, I take paracetamol. Otherwise I dont...If it is paining around 5, I take medicine (3640 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met).

The use of non-medicinal methods for managing MA pain were most common in Nepal, and less so in South Africa and Vietnam. These methods were similar to those reported for menstrual pain, including most commonly wrapping a piece of cloth around ones abdomen (Nepal), eating or drinking hot foods and liquids (all countries), and using a hot water bottle or massage (all countries). One woman said, I was dependent on hot watermy husband used to give me water frequently. He boiled the water in a thermos and put a glass in front of me. I just took rest by drinking hot water (4145 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met). Participants in Nepal and Vietnam also reported eating warm foods with protein, such as soup or eggs, to ease pain. One woman in Vietnam explained, Only my sister massaged me. She massaged and pressed on the area where I said was painful (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, tramadol). In South Africa, several women reported taking hot baths and lying flat on the floor to soothe the pain: I just lay down on a cold floor and they become better (3135 y, South Africa, parous, tramadol), and I just took a bath to relax my body (3135 y, South Africa, parous, tramadol).

One participant explained the use of a cloth wrap around the abdomen for menstrual pain:

Because there is just air in our stomach, [so] we have pain in stomach. That is why it gets better after wrapping a piece of cloth. ... I wrap it for 1-2 hours when I have pain. . When I wrap it like that it lessens my back pain as well. When I have menstrual period, we have stomach and back pain, so it also lessens that pain. I havent used any [medicine] to date. (2125 y, Nepal, parous, tramadol)

In South Africa, a participant said, I take the hot water bottle and I put it there or something that is warm and eventually I become okayit helps and sometimes it does notI sleep if nothing works (2125 y, South Africa, nulliparous, ibu/met). One respondent in Vietnam said she tried taking a menstrual regulation pill, a combination of herbal extracts containing traditional medications called Phu Huyet Khang in between periods to prevent pain: The next period, the pain was much less intense this medicine helps regulate the menstrual cycle (2125 y, Vietnam, nulliparous, placebo).

For managing labor pain, many reported walking, keeping busy, and massaging their bodies during labor; only three reported receiving pain medications for labor pain (one in South Africa and two in Vietnam). One woman said, my mother massaged me with oil all over my stomachmy mother told me that the pain might lessen if I stayed in a hanging positionbut I just stayed clenching my teeth (2630 y, Nepal, parous, tramadol). Another woman answered, Nothing, I was just walking and screaming (3135 y, South Africa, parous, placebo). A participant in South Africa said, With my first child I asked them to bring me black forest [cake]I would eat, when that pain comesI ate that thing almost twelve hours with my second-born I was betterI realized that I should nurse the pain. The more you walk the more you relieve stress (3640 y, South Africa, parous, tramadol).

Many participants said they felt conflicted or guilty about having an abortion, but no one expressed regret about the decision. One woman said, Half of me wanted to have an abortion and the other half wanted to keep the child, but I couldntI stayed strong and went forward because I could not just sit and let the pain take over, I had to get up and get going, as sitting and crying will not help (3135 y, South Africa, nulliparous, placebo). Another participant said, And after I had the abortion, I felt happy and securedI didnt feel anything emotionally. I didnt want this pregnancy, I only thought about how this pregnancy will go and I will feel relieved (3135 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met). In Vietnam, one woman said, I feel like Im such a terrible human being for having an abortion (1820 y, Vietnam, nulliparous, ibu/met), and another explained, I feel guilty about what I have done, yet I think it was the best thing that we could do provided our situation (2125 y, Vietnam, nulliparous, placebo). Others were not emotional at all about the experience: I didnt have any feelings as such. I just wanted it to finish as quickly as possible (3135 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met). Another explained, If I had thought of keeping it then I would have been emotional. But when I had thought of having abortion, then I didnt feel anything about it (Nepal, parous, tramadol, 2125y). One woman said, I just wanted to get rid of this pregnancy. Thats all I was thinking (2125 y, Nepal, nulliparous, placebo).

Most who struggled emotionally or were conflicted said their emotions did not affect their physical pain. However, many explained that having emotional support from family and friends during the process made them feel more secure and in some cases more physically at ease. One woman from Nepal said, If our husband is with us, then it will be a lot easier (2125 y, Nepal, nulliparous, tramadol). Another Nepali woman said, Because I was feeling really bad from inside, so my emotional pain was a lot more than my physical pain, so I think that was the reason that helped me to not focus on my physical pain (2125 y, Nepal, nulliparous, ibu/met). Several participants from Vietnam discussed the importance of family or partner support:

I think the mental state really affects how we feel during abortion. If were more relaxed, then we will feel less pain. Maybe I was unhappy and not so comfortable about this, so I felt more pain. if [patients] have someone to comfort them that would be the best mental remedy to reduce the pain (21-25 y, Vietnam, nulliparous, placebo).

I felt that I wasnt abandoned, so that pain was better...I can feel less scared even when my boyfriend just holds my hands (18-20 y, Vietnam, nulliparous, placebo).

Basically when you're taking that pill you'd better have someone next to you. That's for the best. Firstly, just in case something happens there would be someone next to you to calm you down and help you. Secondly, it's better to have someone to talk to rather than being alone (31-35 y, Vietnam parous, tramadol).

In South Africa, participants shared similar sentiments. One participant said, I cried a bit in the afternoon and at night I was fine because my friend was there (1820 y, South Africa, nulliparous, placebo), and another said, I dont think I would have coped [without mama]. Imagine if I had to go get the water on my own, get the pain killers, the water bottle, all of that (1820 y, South Africa, nulliparous, ibu/met).

Those who lacked support explained that it would have helped. One participant said, I contained everything within myself and I did not tell anyone, so I am thinking maybe if I had shared with someone I do not think I would have felt that much pain (2125 y, South Africa, nulliparous, ibu/met). Another explained:

I was the only one who knewThere was no one to help me, no one to talk to.I wish we had already been married so he could be by my side and everyone could know. If the pain got worse, everyone could have taken care of me or told me what to do. (2125 y, Vietnam, nulliparous, tramadol)

Women who had previous experience with abortion appeared more prepared psychologically to handle the MA pain. For example, one woman said, I accept that pain because I know it should happen like that. It is what I must accept because I had reckoned it before.because I was prepared beforehand, I already knew all the steps, the pain that I had to endure, I can mentally be ready to overcome it easilyso I can be less nervous (3135 y, Vietnam, parous, tramadol). Another said, I had to abort it anyhow so my focus was on abortion only. I felt normal as I had done abortion previous to this as well (3640 y, Nepal, parous, ibu/met).

Read more here:
Experiences with pain of early medical abortion: qualitative results from Nepal, South Africa, and Vietnam - BMC Blogs Network

Enthusiastic scientists aboard the research vessel MV Ocearch pumped their fists as a voice crackled over the radio announcing the expedition had hooked its 11th great white shark this fall off Nova Scotia.

But to some marine biologists, what unfolded recently on this non-profit research ship wasn't cause for celebration instead it raised ethical questions over methods used to attract and study the ocean predators.

About 30 minutes after it was hooked, a mature male its tail thrashing was brought alongside the converted American crab ship, as vessel captain Brett McBride leapt onto the submerged platform that raised the animal out of the ocean.

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The massive, 3.6-metre shark briefly reared its head in protest as the mariner manoeuvred it onto its side, causing the fish to suddenly go still amid the humming sound of the hydraulic lift.

A black cloth was placed over the shark's eyes, a tube pumped water through the gills and six scientists descended to the platform, allowing themselves 15 fast-paced minutes to take blood, parasite, muscle, fecal and semen samples.

Veterinarian Mike Hyatt of the New York Aquarium cut the shining white belly to install an acoustic tag, as University of Windsor research associate Dan Madigan drilled the satellite positioning tag referred to as a SPOT tag to the dorsal fin. It's this tag which will allows thousands of people who've downloaded an app to follow the shark's movements online.

But behind the excitement, an unresolved scientific debate has bubbled away over how sharks, notoriously sensitive to handling, are impacted.

During a briefing, Hyatt said blood tests taken at the beginning and end of such intense captures show the animal's stress levels don't rise. "What's quite astonishing ... is working with them out of the water their stress levels stay the same and sometimes actually improve," he explained.

However, while marine biologists interviewed by The Canadian Press concur with Hyatt's view of the shark's short-term reaction, they wonder what will happen to internal organs and reproductive systems in the months and years to come. Some shark researchers refuse to use the method.

At the federal Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, Heather Bowlby, the research lead at the federal Canadian Atlantic Shark Research Laboratory, has shifted away from systems that involves hooking sharks or bringing them aboard ships.

This season, her team used a lure to attract a four-metre female and then a harpoon to rapidly attach a pop-up archival tag near its dorsal fin.

The recording device will later detach and float to the surface and provide light, temperature and depth data that will help Bowlby study its habitat and habits.

"There's been a general shift in the shark research community to move away from bringing sharks on board a boat," she said in an interview. "All of their muscle is concentrated in their back and it does press down. They don't have a rib cage. They're not designed to be out of the water, and that's why we have moved to tagging inside the water."

Gregory Skomal, who leads a Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries study group off Cape Cod, says he uses a spotter plane and harpoon methods like Bowlby's "to minimize invasive handling."

He said he has questions about the impact of Ocearch's method. "It could be creating long-term problems for the future reproductive success of the animal .... It's an area that people are very worried about."

Chris Lowe, a veteran shark researcher with the University of California at Long Beach, says he observed the impact on a younger shark after he bolted a SPOT tag to it, and the fin bent over and deformed over time.

"At that point I elected not to use them any more due to damage to the fin .... I don't think we've developed a good enough tag design that's designed to come off or to minimize damage," he said.

Still, Lowe says this may not hold true of more mature sharks, and there are tradeoffs for scientists who don't use the Ocearch methods.

He says the pop-up tags he harpoons onto sharks are less accurate in tracking the sharks' precise journeys and he can't collect the volume of data on blood, genetics and parasites.

Meanwhile, Ocearch's method can combine the positioning provided by the SPOT tags with the archival depth and temperature information from the pop-off tags. It's a practice the group has used for females the last two years, providing a potentially rich source of data.

Chris Fischer, the expedition leader and founder of Ocearch, firmly disagrees with critics and says he's gathering "a whole suite" of valuable information widely available for scientists to examine and which will lead to improved fisheries management.

"These will be the most comprehensively studied individual white sharks in history here in Canada," he said during an interview after the expedition ended its work, which ran from Sept. 13 to Oct. 4 off Cape Breton and Lunenburg.

The precision of his tagging methods could help researchers locate the "holy grail" of the nursery where mature females reproduce and give birth, he said aboard his research ship.

Meanwhile, Robert Hueter, the chief scientist with Ocearch, says photos of great whites tagged in the eastern Pacific that were observed years later after the SPOT tags came off "show no significant effect on the shark or its dorsal fin."

The shark biologist at Florida's Mote Marine Laboratory says criticisms about unknown, long-term impacts are "speculation without data," and he notes that during the operation, their team does ultrasound imaging of internal organs and has found no evidence of damage.

"Finally, we put the resulting movements of our sharks on the Ocearch Tracker for all the world to see; clearly our sharks are moving as we know white sharks to do, south in winter and north in summer, with key stops along the way," he wrote in an email.

Still, Aaron MacNeil, the Canada Research Council chair in fisheries conservation at Dalhousie University, has become a critic of the scientific methodologies.

He recently raised the issue of the vessel fishing for sharks near waters where Nova Scotians surf and dive, saying he's concerned it could draw the animals closer to people.

"In my view, the federal Fisheries Department still needs to establish a safe distance for shark-fishing to occur relative to recreational users and exclude shark-fishing within this zone," he said.

Fischer contends that it is not that simple to alter shark behaviour.

A federal Fisheries Department spokeswoman said great white sharks are normally found in waters around Nova Scotia this time of year and in close proximity to coastal areas, and "therefore, it is considered that these research activities are unlikely to significantly increase risks."

Meanwhile, as the season wrapped up, Fischer said he intends to continue his relationship with the federal Fisheries Department, which has granted him permits under the Species At Risk Act and a foreign vessel license.

He says under the conditions of its permit, Ocearch will provide the federal authorities with its tracking information, along with blood, semen, diet, genetic and other valuable information.

"The question for DFO is 'Where do you need us to go next for you?'" said Fischer, noting he would like to return to Cape Breton next year to validate this year's findings.

Alain Vezina, the Maritimes region director of science at the federal Fisheries Department, declined a request for an interview. In written responses, the department said Ocearch is required to provide it with an outline of its activities and the tagging data they collect, and that the organization is to submit a report by the end of this year.

"The methods are intended to minimize any potential impacts to these sharks. Monitoring will be undertaken to ensure compliance with the permit conditions," the email from the communications department said..

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 14, 2019.

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Great white tagging program off N.S. stirs debate over treatment of sharks - National Observer

(CN) Why do birds of a feather stick together, even when it would be better for both if they set one another free? Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday analyzes the costs of cooperation in long-term mating birds to explain the evolutionary origin of post-coital couples.

From the peacocks feathers to the red-crowned cranes dance, male birds often create elegant displays to attract a female mate. In the case of monogamous birds, some males only display after theyve mated an act often anthropomorphized as a display of affection, but in biology simply called a display. Even then, rather than fly off to be woo other lady birds while the weathers warm, male birds commonly remain with their mate and continue their displays.

I caught a female goldfinch, placed her in a bird bag and carried it back to the banding station. All the way back to the station, her mate followed, calling, said University of Chicago biologist Trevor Price, a senior author of the study, in a statement.

He waited impatiently in a nearby tree as I banded the female, and when I released her the pair flew off together in close company, twittering, Price continued. This kind of thing happens in many other species, too, so forming a strong pair bond and emotional attachments between a male and female is evidently not only a feature of humans.

But this devotion can come at a cost.

Picture a male, singing love songs rather than foraging for his offspring. While this costs him and his nest precious food for energy, he is also losing out on other mating opportunities.

Females can produce more eggs or larger eggs, and often work harder at raising them when her mate remains and continues his song. But this extra mothering affects her chances of survival: If a female is raising too many babies or skipping too many meals to feed them, she might not live to mate another season.

If a males display leads his mate to overinvest in her nest so much it reduces her survival rate, selection eventually favors females who ignore the males display. When females stop responding, the display no longer gives males an advantage and, like a bad fashion trend, the trait can disappear.

To understand the benefits of displaying and long-term relationships, biologists at University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina developed a model with haploid genetics to show when and how the couple and their chicks benefit.

Taking into account death and divorce, the model looks at genetic success over several generations and mating pairs. The model assumes males and females pair at random but stick to strict social and genetic monogamy thereafter.

We find that a stable equilibrium can indeed be attained where all males display and all females respond to the display, the researchers wrote. Pair bond is strengthened, and displays between the sexes accumulate over evolutionary time, even in the absence of sexual selection.

The males display is most beneficial if it pushes a female to optimum capacity, rather than beyond her ability.

Say the environment is changing, maybe humans are building a road next to a park where birds nest. The change stresses the female, causing her to produce below optimum, or maybe she spends less time foraging and more time on guard. In this case, her mates display pushes her back on track to provide better care to her offspring within but not beyond her capacity increasing survival chances for both her and her young in the new environment.

Over time, females may come to rely on cues from the males display in order produce an optimum number of offspring, and in his absence, she would under-produce or under-care for her clutch.

This balance of benefits is necessary for both the male display and the female response to remain in the gene pool.

The models enable us to see the wide ranges of conditions that can cause displays to become stuck in the population, evolutionarily, and that can lead to this result, noted Dr. Maria Servedio of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in a statement. Servedio specializes in the evolution of premating isolation and sexual selection.

The study, Evolution of Sexual Cooperation From Sexual Conflict, was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Norwegian Research Council.

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Investing in Love & Affection Pays Off - Just Ask Birds - Courthouse News Service

A black cloth was placed over thesharkseyes,a tube pumped water through the gillsandsix scientists descended to the platform, allowing themselves15 fast-paced minutes to take blood, parasite, muscle, fecaland semen samples.

Veterinarian Mike Hyatt of the New York Aquariumcut the shining whitebellyto install an acoustic tag,as University of Windsor research associate Dan Madigan drilled thesatellitepositioning tag referred to as a SPOT tag to the dorsal fin. Its this tag which will allows thousands of peoplewhove downloaded an app to follow the sharks movements online.

But behind the excitement, an unresolvedscientific debate has bubbled away over how sharks, notoriously sensitive to handling, are impacted.

During a briefing, Hyatt saidblood tests taken at the beginning and end of such intense captures show the animals stress levels dont rise.Whats quite astonishing is working with them out of the water their stress levels stay the same and sometimes actually improve, heexplained.

However,while marine biologists interviewed by The Canadian Press concur withHyatts view ofthe sharks short-term reaction,they wonder what will happen to internal organs and reproductive systems in the months and years to come. Some shark researchers refuse to use the method.

At the federal Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, Heather Bowlby, the research lead at the federal Canadian Atlantic Shark Research Laboratory, has shifted away fromsystems that involves hooking sharks or bringing them aboard ships.

This season, her teamused a lureto attract a four-metre female and then a harpoon torapidly attach a pop-up archival tagnear its dorsal fin.

Therecording devicewill later detach and float to the surface and provide light, temperature and depth data that will helpBowlby study its habitat and habits.

Theres been a general shift in the shark research community to move away from bringing sharks on board a boat, she said in an interview. All of their muscle is concentrated in their back and it does press down. They dont have a rib cage.Theyre not designed to be out of the water, and thats why we have moved to tagging inside the water.

Gregory Skomal, wholeads a Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries study group off Cape Cod, says he uses a spotter plane and harpoon methods like Bowlbys to minimize invasive handling.

Hesaid he has questions aboutthe impact of Ocearchs method. It could be creating long-term problems for the future reproductive success of the animal . Its an area that people arevery worried about.

Chris Lowe, a veteran shark researcher with the University of California at Long Beach,says he observed the impact on a younger shark after hebolted a SPOT tagto it, and the fin bent over and deformed over time.

At that point I elected not to use them any more due to damage to the fin . I dont think weve developed a good enough tag design thats designed to come off or to minimize damage, he said.

Still, Lowe says this may not hold true of more mature sharks, and there are tradeoffs for scientists who dontuse the Ocearch methods.

He saysthe pop-up tags he harpoons onto sharks are less accurate in tracking the sharks precise journeys and he cant collect thevolume of data on blood, genetics and parasites.

Meanwhile, Ocearchs method cancombine the positioning provided by the SPOT tags withthe archival depth and temperature information from the pop-off tags.Its a practicethe grouphasused for females the last two years, providing a potentially rich source of data.

Chris Fischer, the expedition leader and founder of Ocearch, firmly disagrees with criticsand sayshes gatheringa whole suite of valuableinformationwidely available for scientists to examine and whichwill lead to improved fisheries management.

These will be the most comprehensively studied individual white sharks in history here in Canada, he said during an interview after the expedition ended its work, which ranfrom Sept. 13 to Oct. 4 off Cape Breton and Lunenburg.

The precision of his taggingmethodscould help researchers locate the holy grail of the nursery where mature females reproduce and give birth, he said aboard his research ship.

Meanwhile, Robert Hueter, the chief scientist with Ocearch, says photos of great whites tagged in the eastern Pacific that were observed years later after the SPOT tagscame off show no significant effect on the shark or its dorsal fin.

The shark biologist at Floridas Mote Marine Laboratorysayscriticisms about unknown, long-term impactsarespeculation without data,and he notes that during the operation, their team does ultrasound imaging of internal organs and has found no evidence of damage.

Finally, we put the resulting movements of our sharks on the Ocearch Tracker for all the world to see; clearly our sharks are moving as we know white sharks to do, south in winter and north in summer, with key stops along the way, he wrote in an email.

Still, Aaron MacNeil, the Canada Research Council chair in fisheries conservation at Dalhousie University,has become a critic ofthe scientific methodologies.

Herecently raised theissue ofthe vesselfishing for sharksnear waters where Nova Scotians surf and dive, saying hes concerned it could draw the animals closer to people.

In my view, the federal Fisheries Department still needs to establish a safe distance for shark-fishing to occur relative to recreational users and exclude shark-fishing within this zone, he said.

Fischercontends that it is not that simple to alter shark behaviour.

A federal Fisheries Department spokeswoman said great white sharks are normally found in waters around Nova Scotia this time of year and in close proximity to coastal areas, and therefore, it is considered that these research activities are unlikely to significantly increase risks.

Meanwhile, as the season wrapped up, Fischer said he intends tocontinue his relationship with the federal Fisheries Department, which has granted him permits under the Species At Risk Act anda foreignvessel license.

He says under the conditions of its permit, Ocearch will provide the federalauthorities with its tracking information, along with blood, semen, diet, genetic and other valuable information.

The question for DFO is Where do you need us to go next for you?'said Fischer, noting he would like to return to Cape Breton next year to validate this years findings.

Alain Vezina, the Maritimes region director of science at the federal Fisheries Department, declined a request for an interview. In written responses, thedepartment said Ocearchis required to provide it with an outline ofits activities and the tagging data they collect, and that the organization is to submit a report by the end of this year.

The methods are intended to minimize any potential impacts to these sharks. Monitoring will be undertaken to ensure compliance with the permit conditions, the email from the communications department said..

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 14, 2019.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press

Original post:
Great white tagging program off N.S. stirs debate over treatment of sharks - CFJC Today Kamloops

The weather was hot and muggy as the 2019 Texas Archery Only season for white-tailed deer got underway in late September, but the weekend turned out super cool for Chris Barrilleaux of Splendora.

Hunting on a private lease along the Trinity River in San Jacinto County, the 58-year-old grocery store owner arrowed a whitetail buck sporting a really peculiar set of antlers.

The buck is a main frame 8 pointer with thick main beams. The left antler is particularly odd with several knots, curls and a split G2 that pokes outward and forms a distinctive T at the end. What really makes the deer interesting is its antlers are still fully wrapped in velvet.

Velvet is the word often used to describe the thin layer of hairy skin that covers the antlers throughout the growing process, which begins in early spring. The soft skin is lined with tiny blood vessels to fuel fast growth of the cartilage until it calcifies into hardened antlers, usually by the end of August.

Thats when testosterone begins to flow and the blood supply to the velvet ceases, causing it to dry and peel away from the bone. Bucks help things along by rubbing on trees and bushes to polish their new antlers ahead of the fall breeding season. Those bucks that survive through the winter will cast their antlers the following spring and the growing process starts all over again. Or at least thats the way things normally work in the wild.

Barrilleauxs deer was an oddball. It had retained the velvet on its antlers long after other bucks had shed theirs. Closer examination of the 5 1/2-year-old whitetail explained why.

The hunter said the deer had only one testicle. The abnormality may have come about as the result of birth defect, or the deer may have injured itself at a younger age, possibly by getting hung in a fence. Either way, the deer lacked the surge in male hormones needed to shed its velvet and spark the desire to do other things the normal guys do when the testosterone high sets in each fall.

Wildlife experts refer to the condition as cryptoridism. Cryptorchids are frequently called stags.

Stags dont make rubs, ground scrapes, chase does, spar with other bucks to establish themselves in a pecking order and they dont engage in breeding activity. Nor do they drop their antlers in the spring or shed their velvet ever. Their male hormones are just too out of whack.

The antlers on a stag just continue to grow, said Alan Cain, white-tailed deer program leader with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Most of the growth occurs during the peak antler growing time from around April through August. They may grow a little outside that time frame, but its minimal.

Barrilleauxs stag wont score very high on the Boone and Crockett scale, but it is a once-in-a-lifetime trophy just the same. Most hunters will go a lifetime and never see such a deer. Capitalizing on the opportunity to take one with archery gear represents a special feather in a deer hunters cap.

Barrilleaux claims he had collected game camera pictures of the stag earlier in the month, so it didnt come as a surprise when the animal showed up in front of his bow stand on opening day. What does come as somewhat of a shock is that he chose to let the freak buck hed nicknamed Ol Velvet walk the first time he saw it.

I passed on him opening day, he said. After that I kept asking myself what the heck were you thinking you may never see something like that again. Luckily, he showed up again the next morning.

Cryptorchidism represents just one of the strange anomalies known to occur in North Americas favorite big game animal. Mother Nature sometimes throws some genetic curveballs into the mix that can cause weird things to happen with whitetails and other wildlife.

Melanism is one such condition. Researchers say it occurs when an animal produces excessive amounts of hair, skin and retina pigment called melanin. The result is a coat that is noticeably darker than normal. Some deer appear almost charcoal in color, while others may look chocolate brown or dark grey.

The condition has been known to occur in a wide variety of animals, including squirrels, birds and members of the feline family. The recessive trait has even been documented in penguins.

Cain says genetic mutations also can result in albinism (all white) or a piebald coat, which consists of spotty patches of white and brown. Of the three conditions, melanism is believed to be the rarest of all.

While melanistic whitetails deer have been documented in several states, Texas is considered to be "melanism central" by many whitetail researchers. Melanistic deer may show up just about anywhere in the state, but it seems to be the most prevalent in parts of Central Texas. Cain says Hays, Travis, Comal, Williamson, Blanco, Guadalupe, Burnet and Bastrop counties are known hotspots for deer with abnormally dark coats.

We see them in certain pockets, Cain said.

Melanistic deer also have been documented in eastern Texas, but not very often. The only one Im aware of belongs to Bobby Tuttle of Beckville.

Tuttle shot the Panola County buck early during the 2012 season, when it appeared in a pasture behind his house shortly after daybreak on Nov. 7. The buck had a 10-point typical rack and wore a beautiful dark brown coat.

The hunter he said started collecting game camera pictures of the buck three years earlier, but had never seen it in person until that fateful Wednesday morning. Interestingly, Tuttle said it wasn't his first encounter with a dark-colored whitetail on his property. Four years earlier, he saw a melanistic doe in same field where he killed the buck he called Blackie.

"She jumped over into a feed pen with another doe," he said. "She didn't have speck of white on her, either. Even the underside of her tail was black. She was black as an angus cow."

Genetics can be a confusing thing. In extreme cases, DNA may get so twisted that a deer somehow winds up with both male and female sex organs. These are called hermaphrodites. Its also possible for a doe to grow antlers.

There are all kinds of oddball things that can happen out there, Cain said. In 10 years in this position, with millions of deer killed across the state, Ive probably heard of no more than five antlered does or hermaphrodites. Genetic anomalies like that are pretty rare.

But they do happen from time to time.

One of the most impressive antlered does ever reported in Texas was taken in 2003 McMullen County by Alan Woodward. The 17 pointer was still in full velvet and sported an 8 1/2 inch drop tine, according to reports in North American Whitetail Magazine. Former TPWD wildlife biologist Macy Ledbetter said the deer had a complete set of female organs. It was aged at 6 1/2 years old.

Another freak show surfaced in Fall 2007 in McCulloch County, where Cliff Smallwood of White Oak was hunting on a 550-acre lease near Brady. Smallwood shot a tall-tined 7 pointer that would have been a 9 pointer if not for two broken tines. Smallwood, who was accompanied by TPWD game warden Jeff Cox, made an interesting discovery when he approached the dead deer.

"It's neck was swollen and had cuts on it," Smallwood said. "It also had dried blood and hair on the tips of its antlers. It was pretty obvious the deer had been fighting with another buck and inflicted some injury, probably within the last 24-48 hours."

Closer examination of the buck led to an even more bizarre discovery. The tarsal glands located on the inside of the deer's hind legs were snow white, not urine-stained, as is the case with many rutting bucks.

"We thought that was kind of weird," Smallwood said. "Then I lifted a rear leg and saw it had no male genitals. Instead, it had female genitalia and teats. It was a doe with antlers -- the strangest thing I have ever seen."

Major League Fishing announces plans to acquire Fishing League Worldwide

Major League Fishing rocked the fishing industry last fall when it announced the formation of the Bass Pro Tour an invitation-only bass tournament circuit that subsequently lured some of sports biggest names away from competitive fishings most prominent leagues the Bassmaster Elite Series and FLW Tour on the promises of bigger and better things, including more lucrative paydays.

On Oct. 10, the organization announced another bold move indicating it has reached an agreement supported by a Letter of Intent to purchase Fishing League Worldwide, better known as FLW. Based in Benton, Ky., FLW is a grassroots fishing organization that has been hosting bass tournaments catering to anglers on all levels from weekenders to tour level pros for nearly a quarter century.

The company is regarded as the largest of its kind in the world, hosting nearly 300 tournaments across five circuits each year. Among them are the FLW Tour, Costa FLW Series, T-H Marine Bass Fishing League, YETI College Fishing and Bass Pro Shops High School Fishing.

The announcement of the merger came on the heels of months of rumors hinting that changes were coming. A joint press release from the two organizations indicated the deal will be finalized by the end of the month.

Were thrilled about welcoming FLW to the MLF team, said Jim Wilburn, President and CEO of Major League Fishing. FLW shares our commitment to creating tournaments and opportunities centered on the success of the angler. Through this acquisition, we are better positioned to support anglers and sponsors at all levels.

According to FLW President of Operations Kathy Fennel, the merger marks the "beginning of a new era in the sport."

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Freaks of Nature: Mother Nature, genetics sometimes play strange tricks on white-tailed deer - Athens Daily Review

The Miss America 2020 pageant is getting a new home and date this year, but women from all 50 states, as well as Washington D.C., are still getting ready to compete for the national title and take the crown.

This years competition is getting two new homes this year, with both a return to NBC after several years airing on ABC, as well as a move from Atlantic City, New Jersey. The competition will now air live from the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, on Thursday, Dec. 19 at 8 p.m. EDT. This is a change from a previous air date in September when the show aired on ABC.

The Miss America Organization is proud to partner with Mohegan Sun as we return to our longtime NBC home, Regina Hopper, President & CEO of The Miss America Organization said in a press release. We are looking forward to a fresh take on this historic competition that will showcase theincrediblewomen vying for the job of Miss America 2020.

Sowho are the women who are participating in this years competition and looking to take the title from Miss America 2019, Nia Franklin? Check the list below for moreinformation andfun facts about the women competing in this years pageant.

51 New ladies will compete for the title of Miss America 2010 at this years pageant. Pictured is Miss America 2019 winner Nia Franklin as she receives her crown from Miss America 2018, Cara Mund at Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey on Sept. 9, 2018. Photo: Donald Kravitz/Getty Images

Miss Alabama-TiarraPennington

Miss Alaska-MaileJohnston

Miss Arizona-Jacqueline Thomas

Miss Arkansas-DarynneDahlem

Miss California-Eileen Kim

Miss Colorado-Monica Thompson

Miss Connecticut-Jillian Duffy

Miss Delaware-Hillary May

Miss District of Columbia-KatelynneCox

Miss Florida- MichaelaMcLean

Miss Georgia-Victoria Hill

Miss Hawaii-Nicole Holbrook

Miss Idaho-Grace Zimmerman

Miss Illinois-Ariel Beverly

Miss Indiana-TiarraTaylor

Miss Iowa-Emily Tinsman

Miss Kansas-Annika Wooton

Miss Kentucky-Alex Francke

Miss Louisiana-Meagan Crews

Miss Maine-Carolyn Brady

Miss Maryland-CaitlynStupl

Miss Massachusetts-Lyndsey Littlefield

Miss Michigan-Mallory Rivard

Miss Minnesota-KathrynKueppers

Miss Mississippi-Mary Margaret Hyer

Miss Missouri-Simone Esters

Miss Montana-Mo Shea

Miss Nebraska-Allie Swanson

Miss Nevada-NasyaManchini

Miss New Hampshire-Sarah Tubbs

Miss New Jersey-Jade Glab

Miss New Mexico- Misa Tran

Miss New York-LaurenMolella

Miss North Carolina-Alexandra Badgett

Miss North Dakota-Haley Wolfe

Miss Ohio- CarolineGrace Williams

Miss Oklahoma-Addison Price

Miss Oregon-Shivali Kadam

Miss Pennsylvania-Tiffany Seitz

Miss Rhode Island-Molly Andrade

Miss South Carolina-Morgan Nichols

Miss South Dakota-Amber Hulse

Miss Tennessee-Brianna Mason

Miss Texas- Chandler Foreman

Miss Utah-DexonnaTalbot

Miss Vermont-Jillian Fisher

Miss Virginia-Camille Schrier

Miss Washington-Abbie Kondel

Miss West Virginia-TorianeGraal

Miss Wisconsin-Alyssa Bohm

Miss Wyoming-Jordan Hardman

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Miss America 2020: Meet The 51 Ladies Competing For The Crown - International Business Times